Honest services fraud

Honest services fraud

United States Supreme Court cases
Skilling v. United States, 561 U.S. 358 (2010) Black v. United States, 561 U.S. 465 (2010) Weyhrauch v. United States, 561 U.S. 476 (2010) McDonnell v. United States, No. 15-474, 579 U.S. ___ (2016) Percoco v. United States, No. 21-1158, 599 U.S. ___ (2023)

Honest services fraud is a crime defined in 18 U.S.C. § 1346 (the federal mail and wire fraud statute), added by the United States Congress in 1988,^[1] which states "For the purposes of this chapter, the term scheme or artifice to defraud includes a scheme or artifice to deprive another of the intangible right of honest services."^[2]

The statute has been applied by federal prosecutors in cases of public corruption as well as in cases in which private individuals breached a fiduciary duty to another. In the former, the courts have been divided on the question of whether a state law violation is necessary for honest services fraud to have occurred. In the latter, the courts have taken differing approaches to determining whether a private individual has committed honest services fraud—a test based on reasonably foreseeable economic harm and a test based on materiality. The statute, which has been a target of criticism, was given a narrow construction by the Supreme Court of the United States in the case of Skilling v. United States (2010). In order to avoid finding the statute to be unconstitutionally vague, the Court interpreted the statute to cover only "fraudulent schemes to deprive another of honest services through bribes or kickbacks supplied by a third party who ha[s] not been deceived".^[3]