This index collects the desk's editorial guides on federal white-collar prosecution. Each guide is written in a neutral research voice, quotes the governing statutory text verbatim, and links the primary sources so a reader can verify every citation. Nothing on this page or in the guides is legal advice, and the desk does not represent clients or make referrals.
Guides
Understanding Federal White-Collar Prosecutions: The Core Fraud Statutes
The five statutes that anchor most federal white-collar cases: mail fraud, wire fraud, bank fraud, money laundering, and RICO — each with its verbatim statutory text and the circuit-court opinions that apply it.
Statute of Limitations in Federal White-Collar Prosecutions
The timing rules that govern federal fraud prosecutions: the five-year default, the ten-year period for offenses affecting financial institutions, and how conspiracy and jurisdiction provisions interact with both.
Attorney Selection: A Research Note
An informational editorial note on what public sources say about selecting counsel in federal criminal matters — the constitutional baseline, appointed and retained counsel, and how to verify experience against public records.
Where the underlying law comes from
Every guide on this index draws from the same primary repositories: the United States Code as published by the Cornell Legal Information Institute, the rules and dockets of the federal courts, and the published opinions of the circuit courts of appeals. A reader who wants the full statutory context can begin with Title 18, which collects the federal criminal code, and with the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, which govern how federal prosecutions proceed.
Primary sources
- 18 U.S.C. § 1341 — law.cornell.eduFrauds and swindles — mail fraudVerbatim: “Whoever, having devised or intending to devise any scheme or artifice to defraud, or for obtaining money or property by means of false or fraudulent pretenses, representations, or promises … shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.”
- 18 U.S.C. § 1344 — law.cornell.eduBank fraudVerbatim: “Whoever knowingly executes, or attempts to execute, a scheme or artifice — (1) to defraud a financial institution … shall be fined not more than $1,000,000 or imprisoned not more than 30 years, or both.”
- 18 U.S.C. § 3282 — law.cornell.eduOffenses not capital — five-year default limitationVerbatim: “Except as otherwise expressly provided by law, no person shall be prosecuted, tried, or punished for any offense, not capital, unless the indictment is found or the information is instituted within five years next after such offense shall have been committed.”
- 18 U.S.C. § 3231 — law.cornell.eduDistrict courts — original jurisdiction of federal offensesVerbatim: “The district courts of the United States shall have original jurisdiction, exclusive of the courts of the States, of all offenses against the laws of the United States.”
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