## Facts

- Howard R. Reske, Jr., a general manager/sales manager at a Chevrolet dealership, controlled the pricing and terms of six truck sales to Ronald Nellon over about five weeks in 1992.
- Nellon had an obvious cognitive impairment and had recently inherited substantial funds, which he used to buy trucks.
- In the first sale, after a salesman and Nellon agreed to a price yielding a normal profit, Reske changed the paperwork by increasing the unit price and decreasing the trade-in allowance, increasing the dealership’s profit.
- Across the next five sales, Reske repeatedly generated profits far above normal margins by inflating invoice amounts and deflating trade-in allowances, including charging above sticker price and “low balling” recent trade-ins.
- The trial judge found total overcharges of $23,651 across the six transactions.
- The dealership later made restitution to Nellon for the overcharges.
- Reske was tried in a bench trial and convicted of six counts of larceny over $250 by false pretenses.

## Issues

1. Whether systematically inflated invoice prices and depressed trade-in allowances, even without an explicit verbal lie, can constitute a “false statement of fact” supporting larceny by false pretenses.
2. Whether the evidence was sufficient to prove the elements of larceny by false pretenses: falsity, knowledge, intent to induce reliance, actual reliance, and loss.

## Decision

- The Appeals Court affirmed the convictions and the denial of motions for required findings of not guilty.
- The court held the evidence permitted a finding that Reske presented inflated invoices and undervalued trade-in allowances as factual terms of sale, knowing they were inflated, intending Nellon to rely on them, and thereby causing Nellon to pay $23,651 more than he otherwise would have paid.
- A dissent would have reversed, reasoning that extreme pricing without direct evidence of a false factual representation should not satisfy the false-pretense element.

## Legal Principles

- Larceny by false pretenses requires: (1) a false statement of material fact, (2) knowledge of falsity, (3) intent to induce reliance, and (4) reliance causing the victim to part with property.
- Written sales documents (including invoices and trade-in allowances) can function as factual representations; when deliberately manipulated to misstate the transactional terms, they may satisfy the “false statement of fact” element.
- A pattern of repeated, concealed contract-term manipulations and extraordinary departures from customary margins may support inferences of knowing falsity and intent to induce reliance.
- A victim’s obvious cognitive impairment is relevant to whether reliance was reasonably foreseeable and intended, though vulnerability alone does not establish the offense.

## Conclusion

The court upheld Reske’s larceny-by-false-pretenses convictions because the factfinder could treat the repeatedly inflated invoices and undervalued trade-ins as intentional, materially false representations that induced an obviously impaired customer to pay substantial overcharges.


Commonwealth v. Reske, 684 N.E.2d 631 (Mass. App. Ct. 1997)