Hilibrand Series Panel: A Broken String on the Prosecutor’s Stradivarius?: Recent Developments in the Evolution of Federal Criminal Mail, Wire and Securities Fraud

Lunch will be available shortly after 12:00 p.m. and the Hilibrand Series Panel will start at 12:10 p.m.  The panel will end at 1:30 p.m. at the latest.

Please register using this link by Thursday, March 30, 2023. 

In 1980, Judge Jed Rakoff of the United States District Court of the Southern District of New York (then in private practice) published a law review article which began: “To 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. We may flirt with RICO, show off with 10b-5, and call conspiracy law ‘darling,’ but we always come home to the virtues of 18 U.S.C. § 1341, with its simplicity, adaptability, and comfortable familiarity.” In the forty-plus years since Judge Rakoff’s famous article, the Supreme Court and the courts of appeal have decided cases impacting the contours of the mail fraud statute and other criminal anti-fraud provisions, whether it be the limits of honest services fraud in cases involving public corruption or other business frauds or the requirements to prove insider trading. Our panelists, Judge Richard J. Sullivan ’90 of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and Alexandra A.E. Shapiro of Shapiro Arato Bach LLP will discuss recent developments in the jurisprudence relating to these important tools in the prosecution of white collar crime and address whether Judge Rakoff’s Stradivarius may have a broken a string.  David Zornow '80, YLS Visiting Lecturer in Law, Fellow of the YLS Center for the Study of Corporate Law, and Of Counsel, White Collar Defense and Investigations, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP, will moderate.