New York is the nation’s center of commerceoften exporting its business skills and financial products to the rest of the country. Sometimes we export our legal acumen as well. A recent decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, authored by U.S. District Judge for the Southern District of New York Jed Rakoff sitting by designation, provides a useful example of the limits of the federal mail fraud statute.
Every white-collar defense lawyer learns early in his or her legal career that the go to and most versatile of the federal criminal statutes are the mail and wire fraud statutes. In 1980, long before he took the bench but already well-acquainted with the statute from his years as a federal prosecutor, Rakoff wrote: "To federal prosecutors of white collar crime, the mail fraud statute is our Stradivarius, our Colt 45, our Louisville Slugger, our Cuisinartand our true love. We may flirt with RICO, show off with 10b-5, and call the conspiracy law ‘darling,’ but we always come home to the virtues of 18 U.S.C. §1341, with its simplicity, adaptability, and comfortable familiarity."1
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