United States v. Bernard Cornfeld, Dba Grayhall, Inc.

Appellant Bernard Cornfeld was convicted by jury trial on three counts of fraud by wire, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1343 , for the use of two multi-frequency signal generators, called “blue boxes”, which enabled callers to reroute long distance telephone calls and avoid being billed for the services. We affirm.

I

The indictment chronologically broke down the scheme to defraud into two separate time periods. Between July 20 and October 18, 1974, Cornfeld utilized or caused to be utilized the “415” area code scheme, and between approximately October 29, 1974 and January 28, 1975, he utilized or caused to be utilized the “800” area code scheme. Count three pertained to a single telephone call on or about January 17, 1975, with respect to a call to Geneva, Switzerland.

In December, 1974, William Chaney, an experienced Pacific Telephone Company (Pacific) investigator, routinely reviewed an 800 INWATS print-out for the period between October 29 and November 7, 1974, and noted that twelve “800” number calls were made from telephone number 274-8698, registered to Grayhall, Inc., 1100 Carolyn Way, Beverly Hills, California (Gray-hall). Seven of these calls were made to the Sheraton…