The Insurance Commissions

A political party chairman decided which insurance agency handled the state's workers' compensation policy. He required the chosen agency to share its commissions with other agencies he named. One of those was secretly controlled by a former state official and a private businessman. Over several years, hundreds of thousands of dollars in commissions flowed to them. The two were charged with mail fraud. The theory was not that the state paid too much, but that its citizens were cheated of their right to honest government. The law punishes schemes to defraud that use the mails.