offense of mail fraud, so too is the scheme or artifice to defraud. See 18 U.S.C. § 1341, set out in footnote 15 supra. Each time defendants misrepresented the business nature of an expense, made a questionable charge, or received compensation to which they were not entitled, they lessened the income available to the Estate. Plaintiffs have provided evidence that these activities, which implemented defendants’ purported scheme to defraud the Estate, lasted more than three and a half years, from November 10,1987, to July 1991. We conclude that a scheme lasting over three years extends over a “substantial” period of time and therefore constitutés the type of “long-term criminal conduct” that RICO was enacted to address. See United States v. Pelullo, 964 F.2d 193, 209 (3d Cir.1992) (<HOLDING>); Swistock v. Jones, 884 F.2d 755, 759 (3d
holding that instructions allowing a jury to find an enterprise from evidence of its activity as opposed to its structure properly conveyed the holding in turkette that proof of a pattern of racketeering activity may be sufficient in a particular case to permit a jury to infer the existence of an associationinfact enterprise holding that openended continuity was not established where plaintiffs had alleged no basis from which the court could conclude that continuation of the purported racketeering activities was likely at the time the complaint was filed holding that a pattern of racketeering activity required multiple illegal schemes holding that a jury could find a nineteen month period of racketeering activity sufficient to satisfy continuity requirement holding that a six month closedended period did not satisfy the continuity requirement