## Facts

- William Archie Williams maintained accounts at two federally insured banks.
- He engaged in transactions the government characterized as “check-kiting,” drawing checks far exceeding available funds at one bank, depositing them into the other, and then reversing the process.
- Federal prosecutors charged Williams under 18 U.S.C. § 1014 for knowingly making a false statement or willfully overvaluing property or security to influence a covered financial institution in connection with an application, advance, commitment, or loan.
- A federal district court convicted Williams; the Fifth Circuit affirmed.
- The Supreme Court granted certiorari to determine whether depositing insufficient-funds checks, without more, falls within § 1014.

## Issues

1. Whether depositing a check backed by insufficient funds constitutes “making a false statement or report” under 18 U.S.C. § 1014.
2. Whether the face amount of such checks constitutes “willfully overvaluing” property or security under § 1014.
3. Whether § 1014 should be construed to reach check-kiting-like conduct absent clear statutory text and history.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court reversed Williams’s convictions and remanded.
- The Court held that depositing bad checks, standing alone, is not proscribed by § 1014 as either a “false statement” or an “overvaluation.”
- The Court concluded that a check is not a factual assertion capable of being true or false for purposes of § 1014.
- The Court rejected the government’s overvaluation theory and declined to interpret § 1014 as a general bad-check statute.

## Legal Principles

- A check, “technically speaking,” is not itself a factual assertion and therefore cannot be treated as a “false statement” within the meaning of 18 U.S.C. § 1014.
- Treating every insufficient-funds check as a false statement would effectively expand § 1014 beyond its text and criminalize a broad range of ordinary conduct.
- The “willfully overvaluing” prong of § 1014 does not fit routine check deposits merely because the account lacks sufficient funds when the check is presented.
- Statutory text and legislative history supported reading § 1014 as addressing misrepresentations tied to conventional loan-type or related bank transactions, not as a catchall bad-check prohibition.
- When a criminal statute’s coverage is uncertain, courts apply the rule of lenity and do not extend liability by inference.

## Conclusion

The Court held that depositing checks drawn on insufficient funds, without additional false representations covered by the statute, does not violate 18 U.S.C. § 1014 because a check is not a factual assertion and § 1014 is not a general bad-check law.


Williams v. United States, 458 U.S. 279 (1982)