U.S. v.  Helbling, 209 F.3d 226 (3^rd Cir. 2000)-The government convicted Helbling of embezzling funds from an ERISA profit sharing plan.  Helbling engaged two lawyers to help him by creating false documents.  The documents indicated that the withdrawals were part of a lawful Employee Stock Ownership Plan conversion.  This appeal dealt primarily with criminal procedure issues, but did address one substantive ERISA question—whether, as Helbling asserted, the plan was not an ERISA plan at all.

This court agreed with the lower court's reasoning that even if the plan was exempt from certain provisions of ERISA, 18 U.S.C. § 1027 and 18 U.S.C. § 664 would still apply because they do not require that the plan in question be subject to all of ERISA's various provisions.  Rather, these criminal provisions require that the plan be "subject to any provision of Title 1," or that a document that ERISA Title I requires contains fraudulent statement.  Without going into detail, this court held that the district court validly found that the plan met the general requirements set out in Section 1002 of ERISA.