## Facts

- Wayne T. Schmuck, a used-car wholesaler, was charged with multiple counts of mail fraud under 18 U.S.C. § 1341 based on an alleged multi-year odometer-rollback scheme.
- The scheme alleged that Schmuck bought used cars, rolled back their odometers, and sold them to Wisconsin retail dealers at inflated prices based on false low-mileage readings.
- The dealers, unaware of the rollback, resold the cars to customers at inflated prices.
- To complete retail sales, the dealers mailed title-application forms to the Wisconsin Department of Transportation as part of the standard process to obtain title for buyers.
- Schmuck moved to dismiss, arguing the dealers’ title mailings were not “for the purpose of executing” his fraud and thus could not satisfy § 1341’s mailing element.
- Schmuck also requested a jury instruction on odometer tampering as a lesser included offense under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 31(c); the district court denied the request.
- Schmuck was convicted; the court of appeals (en banc) affirmed, applying a strict elements test to reject the lesser-included instruction and finding the mailings sufficient.

## Issues

1. Whether the dealers’ mailings of title-application forms were “for the purpose of executing” Schmuck’s fraudulent scheme within the meaning of 18 U.S.C. § 1341.
2. Whether odometer tampering is a lesser included offense of mail fraud under Fed. R. Crim. P. 31(c), requiring a lesser-included-offense jury instruction.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court affirmed the convictions.
- The Court held the title-application mailings satisfied § 1341 because mailings need not be essential to the scheme; it is enough that they are incident to an essential part of it.
- The Court held Schmuck was not entitled to a lesser-included-offense instruction because, under the elements test, odometer tampering’s elements are not a subset of mail fraud’s elements.

## Legal Principles

- For mail fraud, a mailing satisfies 18 U.S.C. § 1341 if it is “for the purpose of executing” the scheme, including when it is incident to an essential part of the scheme, even if it does not itself directly deceive the victim.
- Mailings that enable completion of transactions and continuation of an ongoing fraud (including preserving the defendant’s relationships necessary for repeated dealings) can be sufficiently connected to execution of the scheme.
- Under Fed. R. Crim. P. 31(c), an offense is “necessarily included” in the charged offense only when the elements of the lesser offense form a subset of the elements of the greater offense (the strict elements test).
- A defendant is not entitled to a lesser-included-offense instruction when the proposed lesser offense contains statutory elements not required to prove the charged offense.

## Conclusion

The Court held that routine third-party title mailings integral to completing sales and sustaining an ongoing fraud can satisfy the mailing element of federal mail fraud, and it adopted a strict elements-based approach to lesser-included-offense instructions under Rule 31(c), rejecting odometer tampering as a lesser included offense of mail fraud.


Schmuck v. United States, 489 U.S. 705 (1989)