The Tenth Circuit recently affirmed the convictions, but remanded the sentence of Howard O. Kieffer.  Kieffer, who for several years was practicing criminal defense law, had a problem – he never went to law school and had no license to practice law.  A court in the Eighth Circuit in 2010 upheld his convictions for mail fraud and making false statements.  But he was also convicted in 2010 in Colorado for wire fraud and contempt of court. That decision was recently affirmed in the Tenth Circuit with a remand on sentencing here.

There is one aspect of this Tenth Circuit decision that raises eyebrows.  The issue is what constitutes interstate wires for purposes of the wire fraud statute.  This is a particularly important issue in these days of the WorldWideWeb. For example, in United States v. Phillips, 376 F. Supp2d 6 (D. Mass. 2005) the court rejected the government argument that “in order to satisfy the elements of this offense, it was not necessary to present evidence that the pertinent wire communications themselves actually crossed state lines, as long as the communications (whether interstate or intrastate) traveled via an ‘instrument of an integrated system of interstate commerce,’ such as the interstate phone system.” Even in the Tenth Circuit in United States v. Schaefer, 501 F.3d 1197 (10th Cir. 2007), the court previously held that one person’s use of the internet, “standing alone” was insufficient evidence that the item “traveled across state lines in interstate commerce.” 

So it is surprising to read in Keiffer that the Tenth Circuit is now saying, "“[t]he presence of end users in different states, coupled with the very character of the internet, render this inference permissible even absent evidence that only one host server delivered web content in these two states.”

Clearly Keiffer's conduct was appalling, but the ramifications of the language in this decision could be huge.  Could individuals from outside this country be charged with crimes against the United States merely because they put something on the web?

(esp)(hat tip to John Wesley Hall)