U.S. v. Garten

Record contained sufficient evidence to support defendant’s fraud conviction arising out of telemarketing scheme to assist owners of timeshares to resell their timeshares to others. Record showed that, contrary to defendant’s claim, defendant was aware of scope of conspiracy and knowingly misled timeshare owners into believing that: (1) she had viable buyers for their timeshares; and (2) fine print on contracts indicating that defendant's company was only selling advertisement space for said timeshares did not apply to said owners. Moreover, while one witness improperly testified that another co-defendant had pleaded guilty to instant fraud charge under circumstances where said co-defendant did not testify at trial, any error was harmless given strength of evidence against defendant.