United States v. Robert Llewelyn Love, United States of America v. Arthur Luray Lyon

Appellants were indicted, tried by a jury, and convicted of numerous violations of 18 U.S.C. § 1341 , the Mail Fraud statute. They were indicted with three others, one defendant entered a plea of guilty and another was found not guilty. Love was convicted on eight counts. Lyon was convicted on nine counts. The fifth, also convicted, is not a party to this appeal.

FACTUAL BACKGROUND

We agree with appellee that the contentions on appeal do not require an exhaustive review of the evidence. The evidence presented by the government, if believed, was sufficient to show that appellants, with the others named in the superseding indictment, participated in the operation of an illegal scheme under which victims were induced to make investments on which a high interest rate was promised. Investments were generated in response to newspaper and direct mail solicitations with most of the investments being made in response to advertisements in two newspapers, each with large circulations, published in the state of Arizona. Over two hundred solicitations appeared in each newspaper between April 22, 1972, and July 18, 1973. The advertisements, quite uniformly, promised an investor 12…