A New Dimension to the Prosecution of White Collar Crime: Enforcing Extraterritorial Social Harms

Abstract

David McNab and David Pasquantino were sentenced to prison for very different crimes, but in both cases the laws of another country served as a basis for the United States prosecutions. This Article examines and analyzes the McNab and Pasquantino cases, and in this process considers the issues faced when a prosecution is premised on another country's laws. For example, a key issue in the McNab case was whether the United States correctly interpreted Honduran law. In Pasquantino, the Court struggled with the use of a generic federal statute, wire fraud, to prosecute conduct that violates the revenue laws of another country.

A question explored in this Article is whether a United States prosecution should be allowed when the supposed harm caused by the criminal conduct is predominantly a harm to another country. This Article recommends that extraterritorial prosecutions, including those in the United States that use foreign law, need to give more recognition to the location of the social harm.

Keywords: White collar crime, extraterritoriality, prosecutions, foreign law

JEL Classification: K14, K20, K33, K34