US to Examine Scope of Identity Fraud

Previously in ID & Secure Document News™ (see IDN August 2022) we have chronicled how different legal cases involving identity fraud in the US have thrown up varying outcomes. This can partially be explained by jurisdiction differences in the US federal system, but there is another element to this, as ID fraud can be considered as an aggravating crime as well as a crime in its own right.

Now, as reported in Courthouse News Service ¹, the US Supreme Court has agreed to examine what constitutes identity theft in a fraud after criminal defence lawyers say it is over criminalised by the federal government.

The case that triggered the Supreme Court’s intervention was of a managing partner at a mental-health testing company (we’ll call him DD), who was convicted of health care fraud for filing a phony Medicaid reimbursement form.