Facts
- A Shrine Club sponsored a traveling circus scheduled for late summer and sold advance tickets to local businesses through telephone solicitors and later delivery/collection.
- The authorized tickets were authentic and individually numbered for identification.
- Clermont knew one of the solicitors and arranged for 2,000 bogus “Shrine circus” tickets to be printed; the fake tickets had no identification numbers.
- Clermont caused 10 of the bogus tickets to be delivered to a shop owner, who paid $10 believing the tickets were genuine Shrine Club circus tickets.
- The shop owner became suspicious and turned the tickets over to police before any attempted use.
- At trial, a Shrine Club representative testified that the Club would honor any ticket presented by a child, whether or not the ticket was numbered.
- Clermont was charged and convicted of obtaining money by false pretenses and appealed.
Issues
- Whether passing off counterfeit, unauthorized circus tickets as genuine tickets constitutes obtaining money by false pretenses when the event for which the tickets could be used would occur in the future.
- Whether the Shrine Club’s stated willingness to honor any child’s ticket (including unnumbered tickets) defeats the falsity or materiality of the representation that the tickets were genuine.
- Whether the state must prove the tickets were actually used (or that admission was denied) to establish the offense.
Decision
- The Oregon Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction.
- Representing the bogus tickets as genuine Shrine Club circus tickets was a misrepresentation about an existing fact: the tickets’ present authenticity and authorization.
- The offense was complete when Clermont obtained the shop owner’s money through that representation and the shop owner’s reliance.
- The Shrine Club’s later decision or policy to honor tickets regardless of numbering did not make the original representation true and did not defeat the completed offense.
- Proof that the tickets were later used, or that admission was later refused, was not required.
Legal Principles
- Obtaining money by false pretenses requires a false representation about a past or existing fact, made with intent to defraud, that causes the victim to part with money or property in reliance on the representation.
- A representation that an item is genuine, authorized, or part of an official issuance (as opposed to counterfeit) concerns an existing fact.
- The crime is completed at the point the defendant obtains the victim’s money or property by means of the misrepresentation and reliance; later events do not undo completion.
- A third party’s later willingness to honor or accept a counterfeit item does not retroactively validate the defendant’s representation or negate the fraud.
- The state need not prove the victim attempted to use the item obtained through the fraud or suffered a further loss beyond having paid money in reliance on the misrepresentation.
Conclusion
In State v. Clermont, the court held that selling unnumbered, counterfeit circus tickets as though they were official numbered Shrine Club tickets involved a false statement of present authenticity, and the crime of obtaining money by false pretenses was complete once the shop owner paid in reliance on that deception, regardless of the future date of the circus or the sponsor’s later willingness to honor tickets anyway.