During a reelection campaign, New Jersey officials retaliated against a mayor who refused to endorse the governor by reducing the number of toll lanes serving Fort Lee commuters. The lane reduction caused four days of gridlock and was disguised as a traffic study. Bridget Kelly and William Baroni were convicted of federal wire fraud and federal-program fraud. The Supreme Court reversed. It held that the fraud statutes require a scheme to obtain money or property, and the defendants’ objective was political payback and control of traffic lanes, not acquisition of property. The Court rejected the government’s theory that the scheme’s incidental costs or misuse of public resources satisfied the property requirement. The decision emphasized that not every corrupt act by a state or local official is a federal fraud crime.