## Facts

- Iona M. Moore, a bank teller, was convicted by a jury of conspiring to defraud a federally insured bank and of four counts of misapplication/embezzlement of bank funds.
- Two bank employees, Priscilla Russell and Adrienne Bristol, pled guilty and testified that they and Moore carried out a fraudulent loan scheme.
- Russell prepared fictitious $5,000 loan applications using invented identities and represented that the loans had been properly verified.
- The bank approved the loans and issued $5,000 checks payable to the fictitious borrowers.
- A conspirator presented the checks at Moore’s teller window without identification; Moore cashed the checks without requiring or verifying identification.
- The conspirators divided the proceeds; they sometimes made a few payments, then stopped, and Bristol caused the loans to be treated as bad debts and written off.
- The scheme was discovered when a new loan-payment collector reviewed old bad loans and found that some listed borrowers did not exist.
- At trial, the government introduced loan files for fourteen bad loans, including loan applications, promissory notes, cashed checks, and repayment records.
- The government also introduced computer-generated loan-history printouts through the bank’s loan-department head, who testified the bank kept and relied on those records in the regular course of business, though an outside service bureau processed the data.

## Issues

1. Whether the district court erred in admitting computer-generated loan-history printouts as business records under Federal Rule of Evidence 803(6) when an outside service bureau processed the underlying data and no bureau representative testified.
2. Whether the evidence was sufficient for a rational jury to find beyond a reasonable doubt that Moore knowingly joined the conspiracy and committed the four substantive misapplication offenses.
3. Whether other asserted evidentiary and trial errors required reversal.

## Decision

- The First Circuit affirmed Moore’s convictions on the conspiracy count and the four substantive counts.
- The court held the loan-history printouts were properly admitted under Rule 803(6) based on the bank witness’s foundation testimony.
- The court held the government was not required to call a service-bureau representative where the bank integrated, maintained, and relied on the records in regular operations.
- The court found the evidence, including accomplice testimony corroborated by loan documents and patterns in the records, sufficient to support the verdict.
- The court found no reversible error in Moore’s additional evidentiary and trial-related claims.

## Legal Principles

- Computer-generated records may qualify as business records under Federal Rule of Evidence 803(6) if the proponent shows they are kept in the regular course of business and are relied upon in regular business operations.
- A qualifying foundation under Rule 803(6) does not require the sponsoring witness to have personally prepared the record or to be employed by each entity involved in data processing, so long as the witness can explain the receiving business’s record-keeping practices and reliance.
- Records processed by a third-party service bureau can be admissible when the receiving business integrates the records into its own systems and relies on them in day-to-day operations, absent indications of untrustworthiness.
- On sufficiency review, the appellate court views the evidence in the light most favorable to the verdict and asks whether any rational juror could find the elements proved beyond a reasonable doubt; credibility determinations are for the jury.

## Conclusion

The First Circuit upheld Moore’s bank-fraud convictions, ruling that the bank’s computer loan-history printouts were admissible as Rule 803(6) business records despite third-party processing and that the combined accomplice testimony and documentary evidence was sufficient for a rational jury to find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.


United States v. Moore, 923 F.2d 910 (1st Cir. 1991)