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CRM 500-999

952. Use of Private or Commercial Interstate Carriers

To combat telemarketing fraud, Congress amended the mail fraud statute to broaden its application to include private or commercial interstate carriers in addition to the United States Postal Service. See Senior Citizens Against Marketing Scams Act of 1994, Pub.L. No. 103-322, Title XXV, §  25006, and Title XXXIII, § 330016(1)(H), 108 Stat. 2087, 2147 (enacted as part of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994); see also Cong. Rec. S2654-61 (March 10, 1993) (statement of Sen. Hatch) and S10017-19 (July 30, 1993) (statement of Sen. Hatch).

QUERY: What is an interstate carrier? See generally Peter J. Henning, Maybe it Should Just be Called Federal Fraud: The Changing Nature of the Mail Fraud Statute, 36 B.C.L. Rev. 435, 473-77 (1995) ("The large delivery service companies, such as Federal Express and United Parcel Service, are clearly interstate carriers, but small entities, such as local messenger services, are not as easily categorized.").

[cited in JM 9-43.100]