Shaw v. United States
Shaw v. United States, 580 U.S. ___ (2016), was a United States Supreme Court case that clarified the application of the federal bank fraud statute to cases where a defendant intends to only defraud a customer of the bank, rather than the bank itself.[1] Lawrence Shaw received the information from a bank account at Bank of America that belonged to a customer, Stanley Hsu.Shaw used that information to take money from Hsu but did not directly steal from the bank.Shaw was convicted under a federal statute criminalizing fraud against banks and appealed, arguing his target was its customer.In a unanimous opinion written by Justice Stephen Breyer, the Court held that a scheme to defraud customers also deprives the bank of money in which the bank held a "property right", and criminal defendants may therefore be convicted under the federal statute for schemes to defraud bank customers.