Cite as: 531 U. S. 12 (2000)
Opinion of the Court
to protect the people from schemes to deprive them of their money or property." Id., at 356.
As first enacted in 1872, § 1341 proscribed use of the mails to further " 'any scheme or artifice to defraud.' " Ibid. In 1896, this Court held in Durland v. United States, 161 U. S. 306, 313, that the statute covered fraud not only by "representations as to the past or present," but also by "suggestions and promises as to the future." In 1909, Congress amended § 1341 to add after "any scheme or artifice to defraud" the phrase "or for obtaining money or property by means of false or fraudulent pretenses, representations, or promises." McNally, 483 U. S., at 357. We explained in McNally that the 1909 amendment "codified the holding of Durland," ibid., and "simply made it unmistakable that the statute reached false promises and misrepresentations as to the future as well as other frauds involving money or property," ibid. Rejecting the argument that "the money-or-property requirement of the latter phrase does not limit schemes to defraud to those aimed at causing deprivation of money or property," id., at 358, we concluded that the 1909 amendment signaled no intent by Congress to "depar[t] from [the] common understanding" that "the words 'to defraud' commonly refer 'to wronging one in his property rights,' " id., at 358-359 (quoting Hammerschmidt v. United States, 265 U. S. 182, 188 (1924)).
Soon after McNally, in Carpenter v. United States, 484 U. S. 19, 25 (1987), we again stated that § 1341 protects property rights only. Carpenter upheld convictions under § 1341 and the federal wire fraud statute, 18 U. S. C. § 1343, of defendants who had defrauded the Wall Street Journal of confidential business information. Citing decisions of this Court as well as a corporate law treatise, we observed that "[c]onfidential business information has long been recognized as property." 484 U. S., at 26.
The following year, Congress amended the law specifically to cover one of the "intangible rights" that lower courts had
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