Bridgegate - Open Questions After Supreme Court Narrows Fraud Statutes

June 10, 2020  |  New York Law Journal

Federal prosecutors often cannot resist the attractions of broadly worded “catch-all” fraud statutes like the one prohibiting wire fraud. From time to time, however, the Supreme Court has rebuffed efforts to further expand the boundaries of these crimes. In our latest article, we discuss the Court’s reversal of the “Bridgegate”-related convictions of two senior New Jersey officials, and the decision’s impact on other high-profile pending fraud prosecutions such as the NCAA basketball case. We conclude that although the Bridgegate decision did not definitively resolve the controversial issue whether what has become known as the “right to control” constitutes "property" under the federal fraud statutes, the opinion takes its place among Supreme Court decisions reining in prosecutors’ expansive readings of these laws.

Bridgegate - Open Questions After Supreme Court Narrows Fraud Statutes (pdf | 471.13 KB)