Supreme Court unanimously upholds broad reach of federal wire fraud prohibition

The Supreme Court handed down a unanimous opinion (with three interesting concurrences) this morning in Kousisis v. US, No. 23–909 (S. Ct. May 22, 2025) (available here).  Here is the accounting of the votes and opinon writing:

BARRETT, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which ROBERTS, C. J., and THOMAS, ALITO, KAGAN, KAVANAUGH, and JACKSON, JJ., joined. THOMAS, J., filed a concurring opinion. GORSUCH, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and concurring in the judgment. SOTOMAYOR, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment.

Here is how Justice Barrett’s opinion for the Court gets started:

Stamatios Kousisis and the industrial-painting company he helped manage, Alpha Painting and Construction Co., secured two government contracts for painting projects in Philadelphia.  Both contracts required the participation of a disadvantaged business—and in its bids for the projects, Alpha represented to the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) that it would obtain its materials from a qualifying supplier.  See 49 CFR §§26.21(a), 26.5 (2024).  This promise turned out to be an empty one: In addition to using the supplier solely as a pass-through entity, Alpha and Kousisis submitted multiple false certifications to cover up their scheme.  So although Alpha’s paint work met expectations, its adherence to the disadvantaged- business requirement did not.

The Government charged Alpha and Kousisis with wire fraud, asserting that they had fraudulently induced PennDOT to award them the painting contracts. See 18 U. S. C. §1343. Under the fraudulent-inducement theory, a defendant commits federal fraud whenever he uses a material misstatement to trick a victim into a contract that requires handing over her money or property — regardless of whether the fraudster, who often provides something in return, seeks to cause the victim net pecuniary loss. We must decide whether this theory is consistent with §1343, which reaches only those schemes that target traditional money or property interests. See Ciminelli v. United States, 598 U.S. 306, 316 (2023). It is, so we affirm.

Criminal law fans will want to read all the opinions, especially because the concurrences collectively run longer than the majority. I will highlight here the start of Justice Sotomayor’s separate opinion because she uses sports well to help capture the ruling:

The Court today rightly rejects petitioners’ request to graft an economic-loss requirement onto the federal wire fraud statute. When a defendant tricks a victim out of their money by promising one thing and delivering something materially different, it is no defense to say that the delivered items are of equal economic value. Statutory text, precedent, and history mandate that conclusion, as the majority explains.  See ante, at 7–16.  Common sense, unsurprisingly, points in the same direction.  A Yankees fan deceived into buying Mets tickets is no less defrauded simply because the Mets tickets happen to be worth the same amount as the promised Yankees ones.  That straightforward conclusion is all that is necessary to resolve this case, and I would go no further.  To the extent the majority appears to speak more broadly, I part ways from its approach.