United States v. Loscalzo

Anthony Loscalzo, Merry Stumpf, David Siegel, and Albert Boemo (defendants) were convicted of conspiring to defraud the U.S. Postal Service by creating corporations with figurehead minority presidents who did not actually participate, in order to obtain minority-enterprise contracts. The jury was instructed it could convict on either a standard conspiracy theory (agreement plus an overt act) or an aiding-and-abetting theory (knowingly acting to further the conspiracy); Stumpf argued her role — filing annual reports and serving as an officer or director for the sham entities — was purely clerical and insufficient for conviction, and separately that the aiding-and-abetting instruction confused the jury about whether she had to be a knowing party to the agreement.