Laws like this drive me nuts. Why isn't it simply fraud, full stop? Degrees of fraud are fine, depending on the egregiousness of the fraud. Special cases for the type of harm are fine (fraudulent phone vs fraudulent life-saving medication). Why the hell do we need "mail fraud" and "wire fraud"? It's just noise.
> Why the hell do we need "mail fraud" and "wire fraud"?
Mail fraud and wire fraud are federal crimes where the federal Constitutional power justifying federal law is the postal authority and the interstate commerce clause via the national character of the covered telecommunication networks, respectively.
The US federal government has no Constitutional authority for a general fraud law.
That aside, there are various ways specialized domains create risks of particular conduct that might carry the same general problem as fraud in general, but where the context makes it important to define the prohibited conduct differently than is appropriate for general fraud laws.
