US Government Overreached in Identity Theft Case

The US Supreme Court has limited the reach of the federal Identity Theft Penalty Enhancement Act, rebuffing the Biden administration’s efforts to prosecute a man already convicted of Medicaid fraud with a separate charge of aggravated identity theft arising out of the same fraud case.

In November of last year, ID & Secure Document News™ reported that the US Supreme Court had agreed to examine what constitutes identity theft in a fraud, after criminal defence lawyers said it is over criminalised by the federal government.

Congress created the Identity Theft Penalty Enhancement Act in 2004 to crack down on the growing problem of identity theft. The statute does not cover identity theft alone but rather when it occurs during the course of someone using another person’s personal data to enable a crime of fraud or deception. This statute holds a mandatory two-year sentence that must be added to the sentence for the original felony.