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Judge Jed Rakoff famously noted that, “[t]o federal prosecutors of white collar crime, the mail fraud statute is our Stradivarius, our Colt 45, our Louisville Slugger, our Cuisinart — and our true love.” Jed S. Rakoff, The Federal Mail Fraud Statute (Part 1), 18 Duq. L. Rev. 771 (1980). This effusive enthusiasm for the federal mail and wire fraud statutes is rooted largely in their “adaptability.” Id. In recent decades, the federal prosecutors of the Second Circuit have demonstrated, and the Second Circuit has affirmed, that adaptability by broadly using the federal fraud statutes to penalize even conduct that does not and could not result in a transfer of tangible property from the victim to the defendant. These prosecutions have relied on the theory that a defendant can fraudulently deprive a victim of the intangible “right to control” its assets, even if the victim is not deprived of any tangible money or property. While this theory has been repeatedly affirmed by the Second Circuit, it is incompatible with a series of recent Supreme Court cases in which the Court has narrowed the scope of federal white-collar criminal statutes by adopting narrow definitions of the term “property.” Given the Second Circuit’s crucial role in defining the law for the prosecution of complex white-collar criminal cases, this discrepancy looms large: the Supreme Court should eliminate the Second Circuit’s dubious right to control doctrine.
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Decoding DOJ’s New ‘Justice AI’ Initiative
By James D. Gatta, Allan J. Medina and Ian Q. Rogers
The DOJ is likely to face many practical challenges and novel issues as it begins coding its own algorithm for AI-related enforcement. This article briefly examines three areas of AI-related enforcement where such practical challenges and novel issues may arise.
The FTC and DOJ’s New Guidelines Promise Sharper Scrutiny of Mergers
By Karen Hoffman Lent and Kenneth Schwartz
From loosened structural presumptions to unconventional theories of harm such as “ecosystem competition” to consideration of a merger’s effects on outside markets, we review some of the most noteworthy changes in the new Guidelines.
Supreme Court Set to Decide On Competing Interpretations of Federal Corruption Statute
By Elkan Abramowitz and Jonathan Sack
In this article, we describe the competing interpretations of Section 666 and comment on the implications of a Supreme Court decision in United States v. Snyder, where it will decide whether the law criminalizes “gratuities,” and not simply “bribes,” given to state and local officials.
The Role of the SEC In Cryptocurrency Regulation and Enforcement
By Jay Dubow, Joanna Cline and Milica Krnjaja
The SEC's cryptocurrency-related actions reached a new high in 2023, jumping more than 50% when compared to 2022. We expect the SEC’s enforcement efforts in this area to continue at a high pace in 2024, even though whether or not cryptocurrency should be classified as a security or something else remains uncertain.