## Facts

- Norby Walters was a sports agent who sought to represent college football players while they were still competing as scholarship athletes.
- NCAA rules barred student-athletes from using agents; signing with an agent rendered a player ineligible for intercollegiate competition as an amateur.
- Walters knowingly entered into secret representation agreements with scholarship athletes and provided benefits (including money and cars) to induce them to sign.
- To reduce the chance of detection, Walters post-dated the contracts and kept them hidden, and he indicated he would deny the arrangements if asked.
- Universities required athletes to sign eligibility forms verifying amateur eligibility; the universities then mailed those forms in the ordinary course of administering eligibility (including to athletic conferences and/or the NCAA).
- The government charged Walters under the federal mail-fraud statute based on the theory that his conduct caused false eligibility certifications to be mailed and thereby defrauded the NCAA and related entities.
- Walters was convicted in the district court, including on mail-fraud counts, and he appealed.

## Issues

1. Whether the mail-fraud statute is satisfied when the alleged scheme deceives the NCAA and impairs enforcement of eligibility rules, but does not seek to obtain the NCAA’s money or property.
2. Whether Walters “caused” the mailings of eligibility forms for purposes of mail fraud when the universities mailed them as part of their routine eligibility process.

## Decision

- The Seventh Circuit reversed Walters’s mail-fraud convictions.
- The court held that the government’s theory failed because the scheme was not directed at obtaining “money or property” from the NCAA; interference with eligibility enforcement and the honesty of competitions is not property within the meaning of the mail-fraud statute.
- To the extent other counts depended on the mail-fraud theory as a predicate, the case was remanded for further proceedings consistent with the court’s analysis.

## Legal Principles

- Federal mail fraud (18 U.S.C. § 1341) requires a scheme to defraud that has, as its object, obtaining money or property from the person or entity deceived.
- After *McNally*, the statute does not criminalize every dishonest act that causes harm; it does not reach schemes aimed only at frustrating an organization’s regulatory function or rule enforcement.
- A victim’s downstream or collateral losses (such as administrative disruption, reputational harm, or lost opportunities that follow from deception) do not satisfy the “money or property” requirement if they are not what the defendant set out to obtain from the victim.
- An organization’s interest in accurate information used to administer rules, standing alone, is not “property” for mail-fraud purposes when the defendant is not trying to acquire a traditional property interest from that organization.
- A defendant may “cause” mailings when the use of the mails is reasonably foreseeable in the ordinary course of business, but a foreseeable mailing does not salvage a prosecution that fails the “money or property” element.

## Conclusion

The Seventh Circuit reversed Walters’s mail-fraud convictions because, even if his secret agent contracts led to false eligibility certifications being mailed and interfered with NCAA rule enforcement, the alleged scheme did not aim to obtain the NCAA’s money or property as required by the federal mail-fraud statute; the case was remanded for proceedings consistent with that limitation.


United States v. Walters, 997 F.2d 1219 (1993)