You Are In Iowa

An opinion from the Iowa Supreme Court

Can criminal defendants avoid prosecution in Iowa if they were unaware that their scheme was being perpetrated, in part, on persons located in Iowa? This appeal presents questions of first impression regarding the State of Iowa’s territorial jurisdiction to prosecute multistate insurance fraud. The defendants, who live in Wisconsin and Illinois and had never set foot in Iowa before their extradition here, allegedly staged an auto accident in Chicago to collect on false insurance claims. The victim was a Wisconsin insurance company that paid claims through its Wisconsin bank account. The accident was investigated by two employees of the insurer’s Davenport, Iowa branch office, who spoke with the defendants by phone and interviewed one of them in Wisconsin. The defendants allegedly made false statements during the phone calls but were unaware that the investigators were in Iowa during that time. The defendants argue they are not subject to prosecution here. The district court granted the defendants’ motion to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction, and the State appealed. We transferred the case to the court of appeals, which reversed and reinstated the criminal charges. We granted the defendants’ applications for further review. For the reasons explained below, we conclude the phone calls between the defendants located in Wisconsin and Illinois and the victim’s investigators in Davenport induced payments on false insurance claims, a detrimental effect in Iowa, which thereby constituted an element of four out of the five crimes charged. We hold that the defendants’ challenges to territorial jurisdiction fail as to those four crimes and this prosecution may proceed on those charges under the criminal jurisdiction statute, Iowa Code section 803.1 (2011). We affirm the dismissal of a fifth charge because the State fails to show any defendant submitted a false written statement or certificate in Iowa. Accordingly, we vacate the decision of the court of appeals, affirm the district court’s dismissal of that charge, and reverse the decision of the district court that dismissed the other criminal charges. We remand these cases to allow the criminal prosecution to proceed on the reinstated charges.

(Mike Frisch)