Limits on the Scope of Honest Services Fraud

November 7, 2017

In recent public corruption cases, courts have addressed one of the most thorny concepts in white-collar criminal law – the scope of honest services mail and wire fraud. In this article, we discuss the Supreme Court’s McDonnell v. United States decision and the decision’s impact on several high-profile prosecutions of New York State politicians. These cases illustrate the continuing challenge of articulating limits on the scope of honest services fraud.