Pillar guide · Financial crimes defense

Federal Wire Fraud and Related Texas Fraud Offenses

A detailed guide to wire-fraud allegations, communications evidence and related Texas offenses.

By Heath Hyde, P.C.East Texas & statewideTexas State Bar #00796807Updated September 25, 2026

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Wire-communication evidence map

Sender and account attribution
Message, attachment or portal entry
Timestamp and transmission route
Recipient and transaction context
Charged wire and supporting records

This illustration identifies records to review. It does not decide the outcome of a case.

Understanding a wire fraud charge

If you are charged with wire fraud, locate the communication referred to in the indictment before drawing conclusions from the charge's name. It might be an email or an online application, or a message associated with a payment. Under 18 U.S.C. § 1343, the prosecution has to connect a qualifying interstate or foreign transmission to an intentional scheme aimed at obtaining money or property through material deception. The presence of a false statement in a business file is not, by itself, enough.

Take the original communication and its attachments to counsel, together with the messages around it. Include material that appears unfavorable as well as material you think supports your account. To investigate intent, the lawyer needs to work out what was known when the statement was made. A company's later failure cannot establish that knowledge on its own.

The ordinary maximum term under § 1343 is twenty years. Where the statute's specified financial-institution or disaster-related conditions are met, it can increase to thirty years, with a fine of up to $1 million. An assessment of actual sentencing exposure requires the applicable guidelines, criminal history and statutory sentencing factors. Restitution and forfeiture must also be considered separately from guideline loss.

This article concerns property fraud. Other counts in the same indictment, such as bank fraud, conspiracy or laundering, will have additional or different requirements. Texas theft and fraud laws also need to be read separately; there is no general Texas offense which simply copies the federal wire fraud statute.

Wire Fraud Defense Lawyer in Texas

Heath Hyde’s practice page for these investigations and charges: the stages he handles, what to bring to a consultation, and how to reach the office.

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Find the communication named in the count

An indictment may describe several years of dealings but identify one email as the basis of a particular count. Put the date and people named beside that count number, then obtain the communication if it is available. Note what prosecutors allege it did to help the scheme.

The person accused need not have pressed the Send button. The rules concerning causing use of the wires may apply where another person transmitted the message. Equally, being a director of a company does not answer whether a particular employee's communication is attributable to that director. The connection needs to be investigated using the evidence.

Related reading: Two Texans emailing each other.

What property was the scheme meant to obtain?

In Ciminelli, the Supreme Court rejected the right-to-control theory. Information that would assist an economic decision was not itself the traditional property interest needed for that theory of fraud. Kelly dealt with regulatory control of bridge lanes; the incidental use of government labor did not make property the object of that scheme. These decisions make it necessary to specify the property allegedly sought.

A defense based on the customer receiving value needs to account for Kousisis. A theory based only on withholding information needed for an economic decision runs into Ciminelli. Ask counsel how those decisions apply to the property and deception alleged in the count.

Investigating what the accused knew

Suppose an officer relies on figures prepared by accounting staff. That situation calls for different questions from one in which the officer instructed staff to invent the figures. Both officers could appear as signatories on otherwise similar reports. Drafts, working papers and instructions may establish how the numbers came to be included.

The government does not have to establish that the scheme succeeded. It does have to establish the required fraudulent intent, and an estimate which turned out to be wrong is not automatically a knowingly false estimate. Examine the information available to its author at the time. If legal advice is part of the explanation, obtain advice on privilege before raising it as a defense.

The statement and the decision it could influence

Materiality concerns a statement's natural tendency or capability to influence the relevant decision. It should not be confused with a requirement that every individual approver actually relied on the statement. The records of the decision process can still be valuable: obtain the lending criteria, bid instructions or approval policy which applied at the time.

A certification nobody recalls reading may still have been material. Conversely, a general assertion that all certifications mattered can be tested against dated forms, policies and exceptions. A witness with expertise in the process can explain those practices without taking over the jury's task of applying the legal requirement.

Where the communication traveled

An email between two people in Texas may travel through a provider in another state. The sender's and recipient's street addresses do not establish the route. Full headers and provider records may be needed. With payments, an authorization displayed to a customer may be a different event from the subsequent settlement messages.

It is necessary to identify the particular transmission alleged. A document stored on a server does not establish that it was sent on the date charged. The governing causation rules also need attention; ignorance of where a server was located does not, on its own, dispose of the wire element.

When someone else sent the message

Consider an owner who gives a broker an application for submission to a lender in another state. The owner may have caused the relevant wire even though the broker sent it. The instructions, usual process and foreseeability must be assessed under the applicable law.

The original file held by the sender.
The attachment received with the charged message.
Any later forward, correction or unsent draft.

A changed attachment can alter what the transmission proves.

Related charges under Texas law

§ 31.03: theft.
§ 32.21: forgery.
§ 32.31: credit-card or debit-card abuse.
§ 32.32: false statements to obtain property or credit.
§ 32.45: misapplication of fiduciary property.
§ 32.46: securing execution of a document by deception.
§ 32.51: identifying-information offenses.
Chapter 33: computer offenses.

Use the version in effect on the alleged offense date, including definitions and grading.

The state does not have to prove a federal interstate wire to prosecute an otherwise established theft. Nor does resolution of a state matter necessarily end a federal investigation. The financial crimes hub can help identify the separate charge and evidence questions to discuss with counsel.

Changed invoices and payment instructions

The authentic and altered invoices.
Full emails and headers.
Domain records and login history.
Evidence identifying the person using the account.

An office IP address may be shared by several users.

The recipient of the funds may not have had the same role or knowledge as the sender. Investigate what the account holder was told and what happened after receipt. A later withdrawal may raise a laundering issue, but the elements of that charge must also be proved. Record any attempted recall and the amount actually returned.

Investment pitches and digital assets

Compare the statements made to investors about custody, returns and withdrawals with the assets and trading history. There is a difference between an investment that loses value and a balance displayed for assets which never existed. Establish who controlled the display and what information was available to the person promoting it.

Private messages and offering documents may qualify what appeared in public advertising, or may reveal further misstatements. Preserve them. For digital assets, transaction hashes, exchange records and valuation dates are useful. Returns to investors and price changes require consideration in the financial analysis even though they do not settle the truth of the original statements.

Claims submitted for healthcare payments

An electronic claim should be linked to its clinical record and the version of the payer's rules that applied then. Identify who selected the disputed code and who approved its submission. The physician, coder and submitting employee may have had different information. A name on the claim does not explain all of those roles.

Which claims and dates does the recoupment demand include?
How was the sample selected and extended to other claims?
What services were actually delivered?

Government contracts and certifications

What eligibility or performance question did the certification answer?
What clarifications had the agency issued at that point?
What instructions reached the person preparing the response?

Keep the certification's date with the document. Was it an account of work already done, a promise of work to come, or an assertion that the bidder was eligible then?

Identify what the alleged procurement scheme sought. Kelly limits a theory directed at regulatory control. Kousisis addresses money obtained through fraudulent inducement, which is not categorically defeated by satisfactory performance. A procurement violation still needs to be connected to the material deception, property objective and other wire fraud elements.

Online relationships and requests for money

The whole conversation may be more informative than screenshots selected after payments stopped. Identify the claimed identity, emergency or investment behind each request and determine who made it. Then trace where the money went and what the recipient knew.

What the person was told about incoming funds.
Any involvement in the online conversation.
Instructions and actions after receipt.

Establish the recipient's knowledge from the evidence, not family ties or nationality. Record refunds even where liability for an earlier offense remains.

An alleged agreement or assistance to another person

Section 1349: the charged attempt or conspiracy and the accused's knowing involvement.
Section 2: aiding and abetting, with its required intent and participation.

A referral fee or a shared office address leaves the agreement and the person's knowledge to be proved.

When was the agreement allegedly reached, and when did this person join?
Does the witness's earlier account fit the documents?
What benefit was promised for cooperation?

For Rule 801(d)(2)(E), counsel must check that the statement was made during and in furtherance of the conspiracy, along with the other admissibility requirements.

When the application also leads to bank fraud charges

Section 1344: the charged clause and required institution/property connection.
Section 1343: the qualifying transmission and its role in executing the property scheme.

The same application may be relevant to both without proving every element of either.

The bank fraud pillar and federal bank fraud hub discuss Loughrin and Shaw in relation to the clauses of § 1344. Their bank-property analysis should not be used as a substitute for proof of the wire. Any grouping, multiplicity or punishment issue also needs to be researched under the applicable law rather than resolved from the fact that the counts overlap.

What happened to the money afterward

When the money allegedly became proceeds.
The later transaction charged.
Its source, knowledge and applicable purpose or threshold requirements.

The original customer payment and subsequent use of its funds are not necessarily the same statutory event.

If $250,000 moves through two accounts, that alone does not make $500,000 of loss to the original victim. Guideline loss, value laundered, restitution and forfeiture have different rules. The money laundering pillar provides the more detailed discussion of those branches and tracing requirements.

More than one investigation

State proceedings.
Federal agencies.
Related civil cases or settlements.

Read an agreement for the authorities and proceedings it actually covers. Admissions may be used elsewhere, and state and federal procedures differ. A departmental prosecution policy should not be assumed to bar a case legally.

Preserving the original electronic records

The native email with full headers.
Original attachments.
Timestamps with time zones.

Record the time zone: a UTC timestamp may fall on a different calendar date when displayed locally.

Shared or compromised credentials.
Device records and witness observations.
The authentication basis under Rules 901 or 902.
Any Rule 1006 summary's foundation and underlying records.

Authenticating an export does not necessarily establish the truth of everything said within it.

What each witness can explain

Ask when the witness became involved. A loan officer who reviewed the original application may know something different from an investigator brought in after default. The latter's knowledge of origination may come entirely from a report or another person's account. That basis needs to be identified.

Required exculpatory and impeachment material should be sought, including cooperation terms. Investigate a witness before promising favorable testimony: the person may know damaging facts too. Where company and individual interests differ, interviews and privilege issues need to be handled through the appropriate counsel.

Calculating loss under the guidelines

Whether actual or intended loss governs the calculation.
What was paid and what value the applicable rules recognize.
Which credits, returns and entries remain disputed.
The scope of relevant conduct included in the calculation.

Explain how the guideline calculation was reached; the total face value of contracts is not enough.

Prepare a source-supported alternative if the government's calculation is disputed. The court needs to be able to follow the competing figures. Check the factual basis for victim and other adjustments as well. The possibility of conviction without ultimate economic loss does not remove the need for an accurate sentencing calculation.

Repayment orders and property claims

For restitution, start with the person or entity claiming a loss. Put their payment, any refund and any insurance reimbursement on the same line. Counsel can then check who is entitled to recover under the restitution statute and whether the claimed injury falls within the offense. Two claims may describe the same unpaid amount.

Which statute authorizes the claim, including any use of § 981(a)(1)(C) with § 2461(c)?
How is this property connected to the offense?
Does another person own an interest?
Is the order an interim restraint or a final forfeiture judgment?

If laundering is also charged, ask which forfeiture statute the government invokes for that count.

Deciding how to proceed

Have counsel read the proffer agreement before you attend. Its limits on using your statements may contain exceptions, including uses of leads obtained from what you say. Take time to check your memory against the records. Do not guess at a missing date.

A plea to one wire may have a factual basis describing a much broader scheme. Read it with counsel and identify which transactions remain disputed. The guidelines, financial consequences, waivers and other proceedings all matter to the decision. If the case goes to trial, the defense should be grounded in evidence of what the accused and business actually did.

Pretrial objections and the jury charge

Choose a motion by the problem it can actually resolve. An inadequate property allegation, an untimely count and an unlawful search raise different issues. The same is true of an unreliable expert opinion. A facial challenge to an indictment does not ordinarily allow all disputed trial facts to be decided in advance.

Scheme, materiality, intent and property.
The qualifying wire and its connection to execution.
Supported defenses under governing law.

Adapt instructions to the evidence and preserve objections at the charge conference. The elements article provides an introduction.

Dates and places for each wire

Each alleged wire date.
The original and superseding indictment dates.
Any asserted tolling.

Compare § 3282 with § 3293; the latter's longer period requires its conditions concerning fraud affecting a financial institution.

For venue, establish the relevant sending, receipt and transmission conduct. Residence alone is not the answer. A later concealment message also needs to be assessed as an alleged wire in furtherance of an ongoing scheme; its existence should not simply be used to make all earlier conduct timely or properly venued.

Explaining the transactions at trial

Choose examples whose relevance to the other transactions can be explained. One genuine invoice cannot establish that all the invoices were genuine.

The representation.
Its transmission.
Approval and payment.

Identify sources and disputed inferences. The prosecution must prove each offense beyond a reasonable doubt.

A software company's subscriber report

Consider this hypothetical. A software business seeking financing reports 2,000 subscribers. A footnote divides that number into 1,600 paying accounts and 400 trials. The lender advances the money. The company pays its developers, sends $700,000 to an affiliate and later defaults.

Did the agreement use 'subscriber' to mean a paying customer? Find the report version the lender received and examine how the footnote qualified it. Who understood the distinction when the report went out? The later default does not answer those questions. Assess any laundering allegation about the affiliate payment separately.

Further questions about records and proceedings

Promises that were not fulfilled

Staffing and production capacity.
Budgets and work already underway.
Negotiations, qualifications and the promise itself.

Put the promise beside the records available on the day it was made. A disclaimer in the contract will not necessarily excuse a knowingly false assurance elsewhere.

What was disclosed with the statement?

A sales pitch reports $10 million in contracts but leaves out that affiliates signed them and can cancel. To assess that omission, counsel needs the investor's question and the full answer, including attachments. Was there a duty to disclose the omitted fact, or did leaving it out make an affirmative statement misleading? Materiality must be examined too.

Messages generated by software

For an automatically generated receipt, obtain the template which applied on the charged date. The version displayed in the system today could be different. Configuration records can help establish who set the trigger and what event caused the message to go out. Its role in furthering the scheme and its attribution to the accused still need to be established; automation alone does not settle either question.

Which files were available before payment?

Get the folder's upload history and access permissions as they stood before payment. Match a downloaded file to its version on that date. A document added later cannot show what the investor could have read earlier. Ask the reviewer about the files they used; their account may help explain materiality, although individual reliance is not an element.

Advertising reports and traffic figures

The contract's purchased metric.
Source logs, filters and partner records.
Evidence of who knew about manipulation.

Establish whether the complaint concerns low-quality traffic or fabricated events. Value and any later laundering charge require their own analysis.

Questioned entries in a payroll file

Does a personnel file support the employee entry?
What did the approver actually see?
Where did the deposit go, and was it reversed?

An extra row for an existing employee may be a bookkeeping error. An invented employee receiving deposits calls for a different explanation. Follow any reversal through the bank records so one payment is not counted twice.

The rules for a benefits application

The version submitted and dated guidance.
Evidence of the applicant's understanding.
Disbursement and repayment records.

Use the applicant's contemporary guidance when assessing knowledge. Check the statutory disaster-related conditions and any separate program offense.

Business information and trading records

Ciminelli rejected the right-to-control theory; it did not decide that all intangible interests fall outside property fraud. For confidential business information, counsel needs the cases addressing that kind of property. Keep the trades with their dates, messages and access records. A securities lawyer may also be needed to address related proceedings and calculations of gain or loss.

Records behind a grant certification

Award conditions and supporting records.
The preparer and approver.
Evidence of services actually performed.

Examine what the grant's payment conditions required and what the preparer knew. Real services and reputational harm do not, by themselves, resolve the federal property-fraud elements.

Receivables submitted for financing

Customer orders and delivery receipts.
Eligibility terms in the financing agreement.
The submitted receivable schedule and its approval history.
Collections and money returned.

Was the invoice invented, or did a genuine sale become disputed later? Check additional counts against their own statutes.

The value the customer received

Keep evidence of the goods or services delivered. After Kousisis, full economic value is not a categorical answer to fraudulent inducement, but performance may still help explain intent, materiality or the financial calculation. Discuss its use at each stage with counsel.

Checking totals against the data

Duplicate matches.
Returns and exceptions.
Sampling population and method.
The underlying record for each charged wire.

An aggregate should not obscure a missing date, attachment or connection to execution.

The scope of an account search

Which accounts, dates and categories did the warrant authorize?
What did the provider or investigators actually collect?
Which records are privileged, and which show a draft, delivery or rejection?

Counsel must examine the available remedy. Use lawful procedures for missing records.

What supports the expert's opinion?

Qualifications for the particular subject.
Source data, date and assumptions.
Reliability under Rule 702.

A profitability forecast cannot establish that an earlier subscriber or revenue figure was true. Scrutinize defense methods as well.

Statements made outside the criminal case

What was said in civil pleadings or testimony?
What account was submitted to a regulator?
Were factual statements made to an insurer?

Give those materials to the lawyers handling the related proceedings. Corporate production duties and an individual's testimonial rights raise different questions. Discuss any proposed public comment too.

Exactly what the plea admits

Transactions, victims and dates.
Amounts and unresolved financial issues.
Repayments and their treatment.

Read beyond the selected count: the factual basis may admit a wider scheme. Recommendations do not guarantee a sentence, and other authorities may retain their own cases.

A new decision and an earlier conviction

The indictment and exhibits from trial.
Requested instructions and the objections made to the charge.
Appeal waivers and filing deadlines.

Apply the relevant decision to the theories actually tried, with attention to preservation, alternative grounds and the review standard. Ciminelli and Kousisis address different questions.

Preparing for a first consultation

The notice or indictment.
Available original records and custodians of missing ones.
Account restraints, related matters and deadlines.

Identify gaps in memory honestly. Before an interview with company counsel, establish whom the lawyer represents.

Advertising, prices and product claims

The dated advertisement and checkout terms.
The comparison, fee or factual claim in dispute.
Delivered value and refunds.

Assess the alleged material deception and property objective, not just regulatory compliance. A refund or valuable product does not necessarily dispose of fraudulent inducement.

Teams and providers in different states

Where relevant decisions occurred.
Sender, recipient and provider locations supported by evidence.
The actual transmission route where material.

Research conspiracy and substantive-count venue separately where necessary. Raise objections in time; changing providers later leaves the historical evidence unchanged.

Separating company and individual responsibility

An admission by the company does not establish what every employee knew. Compare the individual's instructions, access and communications with the conduct alleged. An owner may also be responsible for instructions carried out by someone else. If the company is cooperating, its interests may differ from the employee's and privilege questions may arise. Before an internal interview, find out whom the interviewing lawyer represents.

Describing the accused's actual role

List the dates of the accused's involvement and the work they did. Match the disputed customers and amounts to records. Then apply the rules for crediting value and repayments to those transactions.

Discuss admission scope, statutory sentencing factors and relevant licensing or immigration consequences before a plea. The absence of violence does not establish entitlement to probation.

Reviewing the proof for every count

What property was sought through the alleged falsehood?
Which exhibits address materiality and knowledge?
How did the charged wire further the scheme?

After an evidentiary ruling, remove excluded exhibits from the chart. Does the remaining proof support the same account? Add new discovery as it arrives, mark contested inferences, and keep the requirements of additional charges in their own columns.

Immediate questions for the family and business

Keep the notice, mark its deadlines and find out who represents each person. Save the original records. Family members should avoid trying to reconcile witnesses' accounts or posting guesses about the evidence. An indictment contains allegations that still need proof, and settling a civil claim may leave a criminal case unresolved.

Ask for an explanation of the immediate decisions about bond, business operations and access to money. The Dallas bank fraud defense and criminal defense pages explain how to arrange a first conversation. Any cooperation with lawful process should be considered with counsel and based on information that can be given accurately.

Related resources

To discuss representation, contact Heath Hyde or call 903-439-0000. Representation begins only after the firm agrees to take the matter.