United States v. Saavedra

The defendant was charged and tried for several wire-fraud related offenses. The fraud involved wrongfully charging Western Union money orders to improperly obtained Master Charge numbers. The principal architects of the fraud were inmates in a Los Angeles County jail. The inmates would telephone individuals whose numbers had been obtained from the city phone book, and would pose as law enforcement or bank security personnel checking on credit card problems. The inmate would have the person read off his or her credit card number to “verify” it, and would then call Western Union and order a money order, charging it to the misappropriated credit card number. The inmate would direct the money order to a specific Western Union office, made out to someone on the outside who would pick it up. The defendant allegedly acted as one of these outside persons.

At trial, the prosecution was allowed to admit testimony of three victims of the credit card fraud scheme. The witnesses testified about calls they received from unknown males who identified themselves as law enforcement officers and elicited the victims’ credit card numbers. The defendant argued that this evidence was hearsay[.