(per curiam). Because the participating Justices were equally divided, the decision below, State v. Pendergraft, 238 N.C. App. 516 (Dec. 31, 2014), was left undisturbed and without precedential value. In the decision below the court of appeals had held, over a dissent, that an indictment alleging obtaining property by false pretenses was not fatally defective. After the defendant filed false documents purporting to give him a property interest in a home, he was found to be occupying the premises and arrested. The court of appeals rejected the defendant’s argument that the indictment was deficient because it failed to allege that he made a false representation. The indictment alleged that the false pretense consisted of the following: “The defendant moved into the house … with the intent to fraudulently convert the property to his own, when in fact the defendant knew that his actions to convert the property to his own were fraudulent.” Acknowledging that the indictment did not explicitly charge the defendant with having made any particular false representation, the court of appeals found that it “sufficiently apprise[d] the defendant about the nature of the false representation that he allegedly made,” namely that he falsely represented that he owned the property as part of an attempt to fraudulently obtain ownership or possession of it. The court of appeals also rejected the defendant’s argument that the indictment was defective in that it failed to allege the existence of a causal connection between any false representation by him and the attempt to obtain property, finding the charging language sufficient to imply causation.

An indictment charging obtaining property by false pretenses was defective where it charged the defendant with obtaining an unspecified amount of “credit” secured through the issuance of an unidentified “loan” or “credit card.” This vague language failed to describe what was obtained with sufficient particularity to enable the defendant to adequately prepare a defense. A grand jury indicted the defendant on three counts of obtaining property by false pretenses. The indictment for the first count charged that the defendant “obtain[ed] credit, from Weyco.” The indictments for the second and third counts charged that the defendant “obtain[ed] credit, from Weyco” and that “this property was obtained by means of giving false information on an application for a loan so as to qualify for said loan which loan was made to defendant.” The court concluded:

[I]ndictments charging a defendant with obtaining “credit” of an unspecified amount, secured through two unidentified “loan[s]” and a “credit card” are too vague and uncertain to describe with reasonable certainty what was allegedly obtained, and thus are insufficient to charge the crime of obtaining property by false pretenses. “Credit” is a term less specific than money, and the principle that monetary value must at a minimum be described in an obtaining-property-by-false-pretenses indictment extends logically to our conclusion that credit value must also be described to provide more reasonable certainty of the thing allegedly obtained in order to enable a defendant adequately to mount a defense. Moreover, although the indictments alleged defendant obtained that credit through “loan[s]” and a “credit card,” they lacked basic identifying information, such as the particular loans, their value, or what was loaned; the particular credit card, its value, or what was obtained using that credit card.

It continued:

Because the State sought to prove that defendant obtained by false pretenses a $14,399 secured vehicle loan for the purchase of a Suzuki motorcycle and a $56,736 secured vehicle loan for the purchase of a Dodge truck, the indictments should have, at a minimum, identified these particular loans, described what was loaned, and specified what actual value defendant obtained from those loans. Because the State sought also to prove that defendant obtained the Credit Card by false pretenses, that indictment should have, at a minimum, identified the particular credit card and its account number, its value, and described what defendant obtained using that credit.

(1) In a case involving charges of obtaining property by false pretenses arising out of alleged insurance fraud, the defendant waived the issue of fatal variance by failing to raise it at trial. (2) Counsel rendered ineffective assistance by failing to move to dismiss on grounds of fatal variance. The indictment alleged that the defendant submitted fraudulent invoices for pet boarding services by Meadowsweet Pet Boarding which caused the insurance company to issue payment to her in the amount of $11,395.00. The evidence at trial, however, showed that the document at issue was a valid estimate for future services, not an invoice. Additionally, the document was sent to the insurance company three days after the company issued a check to the defendant. Therefore the insurance company’s payment could not have been triggered by the defendant’s submission of the document. Additionally, the State’s evidence showed that it was not the written estimate that falsely led the insurance company to believe that the defendant’s pets remained at Meadowsweet long after they had been removed from that facility, but rather the defendant’s oral representations made later. (3) The court rejected the defendant’s argument that false pretenses indictments pertaining to moving expenses were fatally defective because they did not allege the exact misrepresentation with sufficient precision. The indictments were legally sufficient: each alleged both the essential elements of the offense and the ultimate facts constituting those elements by stating that the defendant obtained money from the insurance company through a false representation made by submitting a fraudulent invoice which was intended to, and did, deceive the insurance company.

(1) Indictments charging the defendant with obtaining property by false pretenses were not defective. The indictments alleged in part that “[t]he defendant sold bread products to the victim that were advertised and represented as Gluten Free when in fact the defendant knew at the time that the products contained Gluten.” The court rejected the argument that the indictments were defective because they failed to sufficiently allege that he himself made a false representation. (2) There was no fatal variance between an indictment alleging that the defendant obtained value from the victim and the evidence, which showed that he obtained value from the victim’s husband. Citing G.S. 14-100(a), the court concluded that because an indictment for obtaining property by false pretenses need not allege any person's ownership of the thing of value obtained, the allegation was surplusage.