U.S. v. Parikh

• Decision Date: 25 October 1988
• Docket Number: Nos. 87-8057,87-8463,s. 87-8057
• Citation: 858 F.2d 688
• Parties: 27 Fed. R. Evid. Serv. 335 UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Anilkumar R. PARIKH, Vasant A. Patel, Defendants-Appellants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit

Page 688

858 F.2d 688

27 Fed. R. Evid. Serv. 335

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Anilkumar R. PARIKH, Vasant A. Patel, Defendants-Appellants.

Nos. 87-8057, 87-8463.

United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit.

Oct. 25, 1988.

C. Michael Abbott, Abbott & Arbes, P.C., Jake Arbes, Atlanta, Ga., Bobby Lee Cook, Cook & Palmour, Summerville, Ga., Paul H. Kehir, Snellville, Ga., for defendants-appellants.

Robert L. Barr, Jr., U.S. Atty., Gerrilyn Brill, U.S. Attys. Office, Atlanta, Ga., for plaintiff-appellee.

Appeals from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.

Before VANCE and HATCHETT, Circuit Judges, and SCOTT ^*, District Judge.

HATCHETT, Circuit Judge:

In this unusual criminal case involving a fraudulent life insurance scheme, we affirm the convictions and sentences holding that any error at trial was invited, not preserved for review, or not sufficient to constitute plain error.

FACTS

Anilkumar R. Parikh and Vasant A. Patel, the appellants, jointly owned Best Appliances, Inc. (Best), a small appliance store located in Smyrna, Georgia. Both Parikh and Patel are originally from India. Parikh is a United States citizen; Patel is in the United States pursuant to a permanent resident visa. Both men have friends and relatives in India.

Parikh and Patel devised a scheme to defraud at least twenty-eight life insurance companies. Between January and May, 1983, Dhiren C. Joshi, an individual the government contends never existed and whose existence Parikh and Patel failed to establish at trial, filed thirty-two applications for $100,000 term life insurance policies. In each case, Joshi contacted an insurance agent by telephone; sometimes he requested information on a specific life insurance company; at other times, he requested quotes on various $100,000 term life insurance policies. After requesting and receiving an application, Joshi would return the completed application to the insurance company's home office, which would send the policy to its agent, who in turn would mail the policies to Joshi.

According to the insurance applications, Joshi was a 32-year old man in excellent health who lived in Bremen, Georgia for 1 to 1 1/2 years at Box 58, Route 3, Bremen, Georgia. This was Parikh's home address. The applications revealed that Joshi's telephone number was identical to Parikh's. The insurance applications indicated that Joshi's former residence was 600 West 113th Street, New York, New York, which was a former residence of Patel. The applications showed: that Joshi was an owner of Best and a business partner of Parikh and Patel; that Joshi was employed by Best; and that Joshi had been employed by Best since December, 1981. All the applications falsely represented that no other life insurance policies were in force nor life insurance applications pending on the life of Dhiren C. Joshi.

Twenty-eight of the thirty-two applications were processed into policies. Each policy either listed Parikh as the sole beneficiary, Parikh and Patel as primary and contingent beneficiaries, or Parikh and Patel as joint beneficiaries. The premiums on the policies were payable annually. Parikh and Patel paid the first year's premium at the time of the application, and paid subsequent premiums on the first and second anniversaries of the policies. The premiums were paid from accounts at two banks, the Citizens and Merchants Bank (now the Citizens Bank and Trust) and Exchange Bank in Bremen, Georgia. Parikh opened both accounts in the name of Dhiren C. Joshi. Parikh requested that Joshi's name alone appear on the printed checks and deposit tickets; Parikh's and Patel's names appeared with Joshi's on the signature cards. Between December, 1982, and July, 1985, Parikh and Patel deposited funds into these accounts solely to pay the insurance premiums on Joshi's life insurance policies.

Generally, after two years, an insurance company cannot contest an insurance policy for any reason other than nonpayment of premiums. An insurance company will conduct minimal investigation into the circumstances of the insured's death if the On the strength of the foreign death certificate, twelve insurance companies paid the death benefits. Between November and December, 1985, Parikh and Patel took, received, and deposited twelve checks, each in amounts between $100,000 and $102,000, in twelve newly-opened bank accounts at twelve different banks. A number of insurance companies became suspicious about the claims and conducted investigations to discover the existence of fraud. Because two years had passed since the policies had been purchased, the insurance companies could nullify the claims only upon proof of fraud. The insurance companies' investigations revealed that the twenty-eight insurance applications submitted by Joshi contained numerous false statements.

policy has been in effect for at least two years. During the third year of the Joshi policies, Parikh and Patel produced an Indian death certificate showing that Dhiren C. Joshi had died in a remote Indian village on September 19, 1985, and was subsequently cremated. In November, 1985, Parikh and Patel signed and submitted twenty-eight claims for the benefits of the Joshi insurance policies. Parikh and Patel falsely represented on these claims that no other life insurance policies were in force on Joshi's life.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) also conducted an investigation. On February 15, 1986, FBI Special Agent John K. Coffey, the case agent, received a telephone call from an anonymous informant, who volunteered information on the scheme involving Parikh and Patel. On February 19, 1986, Coffey received an envelope which included a letter and a chart showing the various insurance companies allegedly defrauded, the name and address of each insurance agent, the insurance agent's telephone number, the policy number, the date of the policy, and the amount of the policies. The envelope also contained a note which claimed that Dhiren C. Joshi was simply an alias for Parikh and Patel.

One month after receiving the information from the anonymous informant, a federal grand jury indicted Parikh and Patel for forty violations of 18 U.S.C. Sec. 1341 (mail fraud) and one of 18 U.S.C. Sec. 371 (conspiracy). On April 7, 1986, Coffey received a second envelope from the anonymous informant. This envelope contained an anonymous letter, copies of check registers from the two Joshi bank accounts from which the premiums were paid, copies of steno pad pages with information about each insurance company, the policies issued, the amounts of the premiums, the names, addresses, and telephone numbers of the agents, and originals of sample applications for insurance in the name of Bankim Mehta that were similar to the Joshi applications. Prior to the receipt of the second letter, Coffey received a second telephone call providing more details on the scheme.

All of the documents except the two letters and the chart were disclosed to the defendants during discovery. The defendants neither asked the government how it obtained the documents nor filed a motion to suppress the documents. Prior to the trial, the government did not volunteer to Parikh and Patel that the documents, accompanied by notes, came from an anonymous informant.

THE TRIAL

At trial, out of the presence of the jury and before any evidence concerning the "anonymous" documents was introduced the government prosecutor informed the court:

During the course of the investigation John Coffey was sent a package--well, actually letters from an anonymous informant in New York, and actually documents that--the documents were, to summarize them, copies of the--what appeared to be the check registers from the two Dhiren Joshi's accounts that were opened by Mr. Parikh that were used to pay the premiums on the insurance policies.

They also included copies of what appear to be steno pages from a steno pad, each pad having a different--each page having information about one insurance company and covering all the insurance He was also sent originals of various applications, insurance applications to different companies in the name of Bankim, B-A-N-K-I-M, Mehta, M-E-H-T-A, with instructions written in the Gujarati language to someone else on how to fill these out, how to fill out all these applications in the name of Bankim Mehta, and the beneficiary of those was to be a Verjendra Patel who is a relative of Mr. Patel's, and the address that was used was Mr. Patel's former address.

companies that were involved in this case, and also a summary of the premiums that were paid on each insurance policy. Mr. Coffey does not know who sent him that information.

We have a handwriting examiner who is going to testify tomorrow that he has made a comparison and he has determined that Mr. Patel wrote all--wrote the--at least portions of the Bankim Mehta applications.

Now, we only had available the xerox copies of the other documents that I referred to, the check register, the steno pad notes, the summary, but he will say that he is as sure as--my understanding of what he will say is that he is as sure as he can be given the fact that these are copies and not originals that these were written by Vasant Patel, and I believe his testimony will be that Mr. Patel most probably wrote these documents.

I do not intend with Mr. Coffey to get into any hearsay aspects of what the informant told him because I realize that that would be inadmissible. All I intend to do with respect to those documents with Mr. Coffey is just have him identify them as being received from an anonymous informant in an envelope from New York. And then tomorrow have the handwriting--and not go into the contents of them and tomorrow have the handwriting examiner testify that they were written by Mr. Patel.

The defense counsel objected to the admission of the anonymous documents arguing that their probative value would be outweighed by...