Fraud by wire, radio or television
Title 18, United States Code, Section 1343
Fraud by Wire is defined as “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, transmits or causes 
to be transmitted by means of wire, radio, or television communication in interstate or foreign commerce, any writings, signs, signals, pictures, or sounds for the purpose of executing such scheme or artifice, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both. If the violation affects a financial institution, such person shall be fined not more than $1,000,000 or imprisoned not more than 30 years, or both.”
Contemporarily speaking, the Fraud by Wire statute also applies to the use of computers and fax machines in interstate or foreign commerce. The Fraud by Wire statute may be the most highly used statute utilized by the Federal Bureau of Investigations in its investigations. As an agent, I relied heavily on this statute for the type of investigations I was involved with, such as advanced fee schemes, swindles, smuggling, bank fraud, etc.
The most touching cases I worked in Bangor were the schemes used to commit fraud against the elderly whereby someone would approach them and promise them exorbitant amounts of money available only if they initially sent money to the perpetrators as part of the “deal.” Many people fell for this type of scam, and they are some of the most difficult to prove inasmuch as the perpetrators generally use several mailbox drops and change their aliases quite frequently. If you got lucky, a potential victim would notify you of a scheme during the commission of the crime. You then could assume the role of the victim and set up the perpetrator. With proper technique, you could locate the perpetrator when he went to his mail drop box to pick up the advanced fee and arrest the sucker. Most of the advanced fee schemes were offers made to the victim to provide lottery winnings, low interest loans, or a long lost trust that was recently found by the perpetrator. The idea was to have the elderly and others send money up front to collect these funds. Once the money was received at the other end, the perps would disappear. In many instances, they would pass on the names of the victims to other individuals involved in similar type schemes. Consequently, many victims were victimized over and over again, which was heart wrenching.
If someone calls you or contacts you by email with an offer that sounds too good to be true and they want an advanced fee, than it probably is too good to be true and BEWARE!!
