U.S. v. DeMarco

In prosecution on wire fraud charge stemming from defendant’s scheme to obtain $250,000 proceeds from victim’s HELOC loan during process in which defendant acted as victim’s agent during attempt to sell victim’s property, Dist. Ct. erred under Rule 613(b) in prohibiting defendant from introducing prior inconsistent statement made by victim, who indicated that defendant had promised him that builder was interested in purchasing his property, where victim had specifically denied making such statement. However, error was harmless where defendant had admitted in his trial testimony to key aspects of scheme regarding his role in creation of HELOC loan, his use of victim’s loan proceeds for defendant’s personal expenses, and his pretrial admission that he had lied to victim when stating that unidentified builder was willing to purchase victim’s property. Also, defendant forfeited any error in govt.’s use of redacted information from HELOC loan document in its case-in-chief, where defendant had received redacted loan document two years prior to trial and had failed to seek unredacted copy of said document.