The next act in the long-running conflict between federal prosecutors and the white collar defense bar over the limits of the mail and wire fraud statutes is now set to unfold on the Supreme Court stage: on June 17, 2024, the court granted certiorari in the case of Kousisis v. United States, 81 F.4^th 1250 (3^rd Cir. 2023) to decide, in essence, whether the "fraud in the inducement" theory that the Third Circuit endorsed in that case is a permitted use of the wire fraud statute.

Just last spring in Ciminelli v. United States, 598 U.S. 306 (2023) the Supreme Court narrowed the mail and wire fraud statutes by invalidating the Second Circuit's "right to control" theory of mail and wire fraud as inconsistent with the requirement that the object of a mail or wire fraud scheme involve a scheme to deprive a victim of a "traditional property interest."

Left open by Ciminelli is the question of whether, and under what circumstances, what the Department of Justice referred to in its Ciminelli oral argument as "pedigree fraud" can constitute the required harm to a "traditional property interest."