Milton Mende v. United States

This is a mail fraud case. The first point on appeal concerns, because of statutes of limitations, the effect of bringing in a new indictment which dropped the word “either” and changed one “or” to “and,” plus the substitution of the word “allegations” for the word “violations.”

Mende was one of the principals in an enterprise of - soliciting mail orders for towels and perfume by means of radio advertising. Financially the business was a flop. Radio stations generally didn’t get paid for their broadcast time. Essentially the basis of three successive indictments was that Mende and his associates bought the radio time from widely scattered stations without intending to pay for it.

The mailing of a letter to each of eighteen different radio stations in connection with the buying of the time as part of the overall business was the core of eighteen separate counts. Convictions were had as to counts 2, 3, 7, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15 and 18. A three year sentence concurrent as to all counts was imposed. (We need not concern ourselves with additional counts which charged a mail fraud in connection with the failure to deliver orders to customers. Some of these counts were dismissed for…