What is wire fraud and how is it different from mail fraud?
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Basically fraud as a crime, whether it’s state or federal, involves obtaining money or property from another person through false pretenses or false representations. What makes it a federal crime is the use of some federal-type facility, a federally-related facility. In the case of wire fraud, the scheme has to involve the use of telephones, computers, or things of that nature. The difference between mail fraud and wire fraud is, at some point in the scheme, in a mail fraud case, something is mailed. That is the only difference, it’s a jurisdictional hook, it has no other significance.