Court Opinion

ID: 9425491
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:14:52.82508+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:55.921368
License: Public Domain

Mr. Chief Justice Burger,
with whom Mr. Justice White joins, dissenting.
I join in the dissent of Mr. Justice White which follows but add a few observations on an aspect of the Court’s holding which seems of some importance. Section 1341 of Title 18 U. S. C. has traditionally been used against fraudulent activity as a first line of defense. When a “new” fraud develops — as constantly happens— the mail fraud statute becomes a stopgap device to deal *406on a temporary basis with the new phenomenon, until particularized legislation can be developed and passed to deal directly with the evil. “Prior to the passage of the 1933 [Securities] Act, most criminal prosecutions for fraudulent securities transactions were brought under the Federal Mail Fraud Statute.” Mathews, Criminal Prosecutions Under the Federal Securities Laws and Related Statutes: The Nature and Development of SEC Criminal Cases, 39 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 901, 911 (1971). Loan sharks were brought to justice by means of 18 U. S. C. § 1341, Lynch, Prosecuting Loan Sharks Under the Mail Fraud Statute, 14 Ford. L. Rev. 150 (1945), before Congress, in 1968, recognized the interstate character of loansharking and the need to provide federal protection against this organized crime activity, and enacted 18 U. S. C. § 891 et seq.¡ outlawing extortionate extensions of credit. Although inadequate to protect the buying and investing public fully, the mail fraud statute stood in the breach against frauds connected with the burgeoning sale of undeveloped real estate, until Congress could examine the problems of the land sales industry and pass into law the Interstate Land Sales Full Disclosure Act, 82 Stat. 590, 15 U. S. C. § 1701 et seq. Coffey & Welch, Federal Regulation of Land Sales: Full Disclosure Comes Down to Earth, 21 Case W. Res. L. Rev. 5 (1969). Similarly, the mail fraud statute was used to stop credit card fraud, before Congress moved to provide particular protection by passing 15 U. S. C. § 1644.
The mail fraud statute continues to remain an important tool in prosecuting frauds in those areas where legislation has been passed more directly addressing the fraudulent conduct. Mail fraud counts fill pages of securities fraud indictments even today. Mathews, supra, 39 Geo. Wash. L. Rev., at 911. Despite the pervasive Gov*407ernment regulation of the drug industry, postal fraud statutes still play an important role in controlling the solicitation of mail-order purchases by drug distributors based upon fraudulent misrepresentations. Hart, The Postal Fraud Statutes: Their Use and Abuse, 11 Food Drug Cosm. L. J. 245, 247, 261 (1956). Maze’s interstate escapade — of which there are numberless counterparts — demonstrates that the federal mail fraud statute should have a place in dealing with fraudulent credit card use even with 15 U. S. C. § 1644 on the books.
The criminal mail fraud statute must remain strong to be able to cope with the new varieties of fraud that the ever-inventive American “con artist” is sure to develop. Abuses in franchising and the growing scandals from pyramid sales schemes are but some of the threats to the financial security of our citizenry that the Federal Government must be ever alert to combat. Comment, Multi-Level or Pyramid Sales Systems: Fraud or Free Enterprise, 18 S. D. L. Rev. 358 (1973).
The decision of the Court in this case should be viewed as limited to the narrow facts of Maze’s criminal adventures on which the Court places so heavy a reliance, and to the Court’s seeming desire not to flood the federal courts with a multitude of prosecutions for relatively minor acts of credit card misrepresentation considered as more appropriately the business of the States. The Court of Appeals, whose judgment is today affirmed, was careful to state that “[w]e do not hold that the fraudulent use of a credit card can never constitute a violation of the mail fraud statute.” 468 F. 2d 529, 536 (1972). The Court’s decision, then, correct or erroneous, does not mean that the United States ought, in any way, to slacken its prosecutorial efforts under 18 U. S. C. § 1341 against those who would use the mails in schemes to defraud the guileless members of the public with *408worthless securities, patent medicines, deeds to arid and inaccessible tracts of land, or other empty promises of instant wealth and happiness. I agree with Mr. Justice White that the judgment of the Court of Appeals was error and should be reversed.