Horace Harmon Lurton

“ No such purpose can be fairly said to have actuated Congress. The two sections are intended to prevent the use of the mail for certain purposes. The one applies to the use of the mail for the purpose of promoting lotteries or other like schemes of chance. The other is intended to prohibit the use of the mail to carry on schemes of general fraud, the language being 'any scheme or artifice to defraud.' A scheme to defraud by means of false pretenses is, as we have seen, a 'scheme or artifice to defraud,' within the plain meaning and purpose of this section. ”

“ The claim is that an indictment lies in the western district of Kentucky, because that is the district in which the defendants caused the letter mentioned 'to be delivered by mail' to the person addressed.
The government has suggested that there is a distinction at common law between a false pretense and an indictable cheat or fraud. It may be conceded that, at the common law, a false pretense is not a promise, but a fraudulent and false representation of an existing or past fact, designed to induce one to part with money or goods. ”

“ Any person who shall knowingly deposit or cause to be deposited, or who shall knowingly send or or cause to be sent, anything to be conveyed or delivered by mail in violation of this section, or who shall knowingly cause to be delivered by mail anything herein forbidden to be carried by mail, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and on conviction shall be punished by a fine of not more than five hundred dollars, or by imprisonment for not more than one year, or by both such fine and imprisonment for each offense. ”