A Second Circuit panel’s decision last year in United States v. Blaszczak, 947 F.3d 19 (2d Cir. 2019) held that a government agency’s confidential information can constitute “property” for purposes of federal criminal fraud statutes. That holding, which was the subject of a dissent by Judge Amalya Kearse, was undermined by the Supreme Court’s subsequent unanimous decision reversing the convictions in the George Washington Bridge case, Kelly v. United States, 140 S.Ct. 1565 (2020), which held that “a scheme to alter … a regulatory choice is not one to appropriate the government’s property.” Days before Thanksgiving, the United States Solicitor General’s office responded to defendants’ petitions for certiorari in Blaszczak. The government agreed that the Supreme Court should vacate the panel’s decision, and suggested a remand for further consideration in light of the intervening decision in Kelly.

But Blaszczak also included another holding that perhaps has attracted even more attention: that the “personal benefit” test announced by the Supreme Court for insider trading cases under Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act does not apply to insider trading cases charged under the separate criminal fraud statutes in Title 18. That holding significantly widens the scope of criminal insider trading. It also creates the anomaly of extending the criminal law beyond the SEC’s civil enforcement authority.

This content has been archived. It is available through our partners, LexisNexis® and Bloomberg Law.

To view this content, please continue to their sites.

Not a Lexis Subscriber?
Subscribe Now

Not a Bloomberg Law Subscriber?
Subscribe Now

Why am I seeing this?

LexisNexis® and Bloomberg Law are third party online distributors of the broad collection of current and archived versions of ALM's legal news publications. LexisNexis® and Bloomberg Law customers are able to access and use ALM's content, including content from the National Law Journal, The American Lawyer, Legaltech News, The New York Law Journal, and Corporate Counsel, as well as other sources of legal information.

For questions call 1-877-256-2472 or contact us at [email protected]