Page:United States Reports, Volume 257.djvu/118

Rh 27. patent, if any, the evidence here is quite sufficient to overcome it.

 

No. 48.


 * 1) Under the Act of September 24, 1917, amended September 24, 1918, cc. 56, 176, 40 Stat. 291, 966, authorizing the Secretary of the Treasury to borrow money and to issue therefor, at such price or prices and upon such terms and conditions as he might determine, war savings certificates in amounts of not more than $100 to any one person at any one time, and of which no one person at any one time should hold more than $1,000, and further providing that the Secretary might issue stamps, under such regulations and upon such terms and conditions as he might prescribe, to evidence payments for or on account of the certificates, the Secretary was empowered to issue non-transferable certificates valid only when bearing one or more such stamps and when endorsed with the name of its owner. Pp. 39, 41.
 * 2) War savings certificates and war savings certificate stamps, issued pursuant to the act and the regulations, are obligations of the United States within the meaning of §§ 148 and 151 of the Criminal Code. P. 40.
 * 3) One who tears war savings certificate stamps from a war savings certificate issued to another, with intent to use them apart from the certificate bearing the purchaser's name, alters the obligation with intent to defraud (the United States) in the sense of Criminal Code, § 148, since the purposes of the Act of September 24, 1917, supra, and the conditions provided to insure them, will thus be fraudulently defeated. P. 42.
 * 4) Possession of part of such certificate and attached stamps, with intent to defraud the United States as above, is a violation of Criminal Code, § 151. P. 42.

Reversed. 