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Comment by chopete3 | Hacker News Reader

>> Charges for which Holmes was convicted in January. These included three counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

Naive question: Why do they call this wire fraud? Where is the wire in this fraud?

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As opposed to mail fraud -- basically any kind of fraud committed via electronic communication. At the time they would have been thinking of telegrams and phones, but the statute covers fraudulent materials "transmitted by means of wire, radio, or television communication", so that covers the Internet as well.

If you commit all your fraud via Starlink, could you make the argument that you didn't do it over wire?

You can try almost anything in a courtroom, whether something’s likely to work is wholly another matter. When in doubt, legal processes tend to try to defer to precedent and prior case law.

My guess is they would see a parallel between other also-not-really-telegraph-wire technologies on which others were convicted of wire fraud, and a Starlink connection.

This means it probably wouldn’t legally be treated as appreciably different from any other current physical or wireless connection.

It includes "radio".

Ah, but what about the lasers?

High frequency radio signals?

That is certainly not possible, because there is a wire between Starlink router and Starlink antenna! :)

There's definitely a wire somewhere in the mix. Probably more than one!

Hmm smoke singnals, semaphores and International Code of Signals.

I think the correct way is to pick something really old... Now your co-conspirators likely will screw it up.

The court will argue that even your so-called wireless device has wires inside it.

I thought the term "wire fraud" meant "wire" in the sense of "telegraph". That is, it's fraud relying on telecommunications, which could include landline telephone, satellite, microwave, radio or internet. Have I got that wrong?

You are correct. It was a bad joke on my part.

I am not a lawyer but I believe if the fraud involves any kind of electronic communications, like sending a term sheet to an investor via email, then it can be charged as wire fraud.

Probably to telegraph the fact that it’s not using actual physical paper documents?

There is an appropriate name like Investment Fraud. Just wondering why don't use it and lump everything into under wire fraud which makes it seem a petty crime.

Because names are sticky and you don’t need generalised category names if there’s only one thing in the category. I’d imagine wire fraud was named when telegraph wires were the only long distance instant communication.

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