| Litigants: | Shaw v. United States |
| Arguedate: | October 4 |
| Argueyear: | 2016 |
| Decidedate: | December 12 |
| Decideyear: | 2016 |
| Fullname: | Lawrence Eugene Shaw, Petitioner v. United States |
| Usvol: | 580 |
| Uspage: | ___ |
| Parallelcitations: | 137 S. Ct. 462; 196 L. Ed. 2d 372 |
| Docket: | 15–5991 |
| Opinionannouncement: | https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/16pdf/15-5991_8m59.pdf |
| Prior: | United States v. Shaw, 781 F.3d 1130 (9th Cir. 2015) |
| Majority: | Breyer |
| Joinmajority: | unanimous |
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.[2] However, the Supreme Court remanded the case to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to determine whether the trial court administered an erroneous jury instruction.[3]