[19-783] Van Buren v. United States

Van Buren v. United States

Wikipedia · Justia · Docket · oyez.org

Argued on Nov 30, 2020.

Petitioner: Nathan Van Buren.
Respondent: United States of America.

Advocates:

• Jeffrey L. Fisher (for the petitioner)
• Eric J. Feigin (for the respondent)

Facts of the case (from oyez.org)

Nathan Van Buren was a sergeant with the Cumming, Georgia, Police Department. In that capacity, he came to know a man named Andrew Albo, who allegedly paid young prostitutes to spend time with him and then accused the women of stealing the money he gave them. Van Buren asked Albo for a loan, falsely claiming that he needed over $15,000 to settle his son’s medical bills. Unbeknownst to Van Buren, Albo recorded the conversation in which Van Buren requested the loan. Albo presented the recording to a detective in the Forsyth County Sheriff’s Office, alleging that Van Buren was “shaking him down for his money.” As a result, the FBI conducted a sting operation to test how far Van Buren was willing to go for money. As part of the sting operation, Albo asked Van Buren to look into a woman Albo named, to see whether she was an undercover officer before he would provide Van Buren with the full amount of money Van Buren requested. Van Buren searched the woman’s information in a government database maintained by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) and the FBI. The next day, FBI and GBI agents confronted Van Buren, and Van Buren admitted to the fake story about his son to get the loan from Albo, his use of the government database to search for the woman Albo mentioned might be an undercover officer, and that he understood the purpose of searching the database was to discover and reveal to Albo whether the woman was an undercover officer.

A federal grand jury charged Van Buren with one count of honest-services wire fraud, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 1343 and 1346, and one count of felony computer fraud, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1030. A jury convicted Van Buren on both counts, and Van Buren appealed his convictions. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit found the jury instructions as to the honest-services count were fatally flawed and remanded that charge for a new trial. It found no deficiencies in the conviction for computer fraud and affirmed that conviction, citing Eleventh Circuit precedent holding that a person with authority to access a computer can be guilty of computer fraud if that person subsequently misuses the computer. 

Question

Does a person who is authorized to access information on a computer for certain purposes violate Section 1030(a)(2) of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act if he accesses that information for an improper purpose?