On June 24, 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on a trio of honest service fraud cases, holding that although the honest services fraud statute, set forth in 18 U.S.C. Section 1346, was not unconstitutionally vague, it could be read only to encompass schemes to defraud that involve bribes or kickbacks.1 Any other type of “undisclosed self-dealing by a public official or a private employee” was not deemed to be within the statute’s purview. Of course, this decision does not end official corruption prosecutions. Undoubtedly, the government will revisit other statutes, long in existence, to prosecute corruption. A variety of remaining federal statutes remain within the government’s arsenal.
Bribery Statute
Section 666 was enacted in 1984 “to protect the integrity of the vast sums of money distributed through [f]ederal programs from theft, fraud, and undue influence by bribery”2 and prohibits bribery in public and private organizations that receive, in a one year period, benefits in excess of $10,000 under a federal program. Subsection (a)(1) criminalizes the receipt or demand of such a bribe while subsection (a)(2) criminalizes the giving of the bribe.
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