The wire fraud statute is the most frequently charged provision in the federal criminal code. Its breadth is not accidental. 18 U.S.C. 1343 provides that whoever, having devised or intending to devise any scheme…
The IRS investigates. The Department of Justice prosecutes. The distinction between those two functions is the line between a civil tax matter and a criminal one, and that line is not always visible from…
Money laundering charges are added to fraud indictments for a specific reason: they increase the sentencing exposure and they are difficult to defend against once the predicate offense is established. The federal money laundering…
Mail fraud and wire fraud are twin statutes. They share elements, share defenses, and share the distinction of appearing in more federal indictments than any other pair of provisions in the white-collar criminal code.…
Identity theft in the federal system is both a standalone offense and a sentencing enhancement, and the two applications operate independently of each other. The Identity Theft Enforcement and Restitution Act and the aggravated…
Federal firearms charges carry mandatory minimum sentences that are served consecutively to everything else. That consecutive character is the feature that changes every sentencing calculation in which a firearms count appears. The federal firearms…
Embezzlement is a crime of position. The conduct it describes is possible only because the defendant occupied a role that gave them access to what they took. Federal embezzlement statutes are numerous and specific,…
The conspiracy charge in a federal drug case does not require that drugs passed through your hands. It requires that you agreed to participate in a scheme that involved them. 21 U.S.C. 846 provides…
Public corruption is the federal crime that arrives with the most institutional weight behind it. The FBI's Public Corruption Unit is the bureau's largest field-based investigative program, and the Department of Justice treats corruption…
The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act is an American statute with global reach. The fact that the conduct occurred abroad does not limit the Department of Justice's interest in prosecuting it. The Foreign Corrupt Practices…