In the United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit No. 18‐3633 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff‐Appellee, v. ALFRED L. CROSS, Defendant‐Appellant. Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Illinois. No. 3:17‐cr‐30047‐NJR‐1 — Nancy J. Rosenstengel, Chief Judge. ARGUED SEPTEMBER 25, 2019 — DECIDED MAY 22, 2020 AMENDED ON DENIAL OF REHEARING AND REHEARING EN BANC JUNE 18, 2020 Before RIPPLE, ROVNER, and BRENNAN, Circuit Judges. ROVNER, Circuit Judge. Alfred L. Cross pled guilty to five counts of bank fraud, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1344(1). Shortly before sentencing, he moved pro se to terminate his counsel, 2 No. 18‐3633 withdraw his guilty plea, and dismiss the case. The district court denied all three motions. He now appeals the court’s denial of his motion to withdraw his plea, and we affirm. I. Between April of 2011 and March of 2015, Cross unlawfully obtained approximately $516,000 from several southern Illinois banks through a simple scheme. Cross opened bank accounts at out‐of‐state banks in the names of companies that he claimed to own. He also opened checking accounts at seven banks in southern Illinois, again in the names of companies he purportedly owned. Over the course of four years, he wrote large checks on the out‐of‐state accounts and deposited them in his accounts at the Illinois banks, knowing that there were insufficient funds in the out‐of‐state accounts to cover those checks. In each of the charged instances, he then withdrew from the Illinois banks all, or substantially all, of the money that he had purportedly deposited, taking the funds in the form of cashier’s checks, cash withdrawals, checks and debit card purchases before any of the banks could discover that the large checks that he had deposited were not backed by sufficient funds in the out‐of‐state accounts. Based on this conduct, he was charged with five counts of bank fraud in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1344(1). Each count of the indictment alleged that Cross carried out his scheme to defraud the banks by depositing large checks written on the out‐of‐state accounts into banks in Illinois, knowing those checks were not covered by sufficient funds, and then with‐ drawing the funds before the banks could discover that the No. 18‐3633 3 deposited checks were not sufficiently funded. For example, Count I charged: On or about April 14, 2011, within the Southern District of Illinois, ALFRED L. CROSS, defendant herein, knowingly executed and attempted to execute his scheme to defraud by making a deposit into the “Al L. Cross ‐ Consolidated Billing Ac‐ count” at Washington Savings Bank using a check in the amount of $18,875, drawn on an account entitled “Alfred L. Cross ‐ Cross/Hart/Page ‐ Special Ac‐ count” at County Bank in Fresno California, which check defendant knew to be NSF; In violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1344(1). R. 36, at 3.1 The other four counts varied only in the dates of the deposits, the amounts of the checks, the titles ...
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