In today’s press release, USPIS Inspector-in-Charge Randall C. Till added: “When Mr. Ceglia allegedly decided to take advantage of Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook, he underestimated the resolve of the Postal Inspection Service to bring him to justice for illegal use of the U.S. Mail.”
Ceglia is probably in the wrong and unethical. But the self-righteousness and pompadour of the USPS? Really?
Mail fraud is a very big deal, because it is one of the DoJ's most important vectors for prosecuting fraud federally. Like "tax evasion", it's a means for the DoJ to pick up major cases in federal venues where the alternative might instead need to be costly, time-consuming coordinated state cases.
The statutes that make mail fraud a federal crime do indeed play up the sanctity of the US Postal Service, which is an idea that comes from the 1800's (when the US Postal Service played a far more important role in our society than it does today). But if the US Postal Service has gotten less important, the mail fraud statutes haven't. In the same manner that tax fraud makes criminal enterprises more difficult to scale and sustain (by making it much more difficult to handle the funds those enterprises generate), the mail fraud statutes make it harder to scale organized criminal efforts across state lines, by making the abuse of the communication services our society provides a crime in and of itself.
The Postal Inspection Service is a useful tool. Mail fraud brings down a lot of sleazeballs that would otherwise have gotten away. Maybe because that's the last thing they would think to cover up.
You make it sound like one of those grab-bag offenses like resisting arrest that effectively amount to `you pissed off the government and now we're going to punish you for it'.
Except "resisting arrest" is your word against an officer's, while "mail fraud" (from what I understand, IANAL) still requires the state to meet the burden of proof.
This comment really comes off sounding bad. You don't think a multi-billion fraud was that serious? The people that arrested him are pathetic for being proud of that?
Ceglia faked a contract, faked several emails, wasted $100,000's of Facebooks money, wasted $100,000's of the courts time, experts were testifying as to the thickness of the paper and the age of the ink and the staple hole locations... all with the goal of getting a $20 Billion payday. A huge attempted fraud by any standards.
Good for the USPS for stopping one more fraud. They probably do this all the time for all sorts of frauds, and they don't get the credit they deserve.
The acts of forging these documents and attempting a multi-billion dollar fraud are serious. The act of sending these documents through the mail is not. It would have been just as bad if these documents were sent by personal courier.
True, but laws such as mail fraud, tax evasion, and racketeering are designed to be general enough to catch fraudsters and mobsters who can't be prosecuted under a specific law or are too skilled at hiding their crimes.
The famous mob boss Al Capone was only ever convicted of tax evasion and served 11 years in Alcatraz for that.
God's mercy on anyone making dubious use of the US Postal Service. An attack on the purity of the mail is an attack on us all and will be prosecuted with deliberate severity.
I would say it's over-the-top, not pathetic. It would be pathetic if Ceglia were charged with murder and he could only be convicted of not licking stamps. The quoted line is just silly. It would be at home in a Mel Brooks movie, except that mail fraud in the U.S. is no joke and carries serious penalties.
In today’s press release, USPIS Inspector-in-Charge Randall C. Till added: “When Mr. Ceglia allegedly decided to take advantage of Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook, he underestimated the resolve of the Postal Inspection Service to bring him to justice for illegal use of the U.S. Mail.”
Ceglia is probably in the wrong and unethical. But the self-righteousness and pompadour of the USPS? Really?