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White Paper: Flores-Figueroa
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Flores-Figueroa Highlights Flaws in United States Identity Theft Criminal Statutes and Consumer Protections
On May 4, 2009, the United States Supreme Court issued a landmark decision in the case of Ignacio Carlos Flores-Figueroa v. United States that is tantamount to a critical grammar lesson for legislators and prosecutors. The ruling is hailed by immigrant advocates as a key victory against Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) efforts to use the crime of aggravated identity theft to prosecute illegal immigrants and undocumented workers who use fake or fraudulently acquired identification to obtain jobs.
However, this pivotal ruling may well also have other overlooked and undesirable consequences. The Flores-Figueroa decision clearly highlights the serious flaws in U.S. identity theft legislation and further compounds the difficulties faced by law enforcement and prosecutors in bringing many identity thieves to justice under existing laws. Flores-Figueroa establishes a potential “don’t ask – don’t tell” safe harbor defense against identity theft prosecution for illegal immigrants utilizing and/or working under the names and personal identification of U.S. citizens, and also for many other identity thieves and purveyors of fraudulent identification documents and consumer personal information. This potential defense exists not only for the crime of aggravated identity theft, the crime at issue in the Flores-Figueroa case, but also for the crime of identity theft in general under many existing federal and state statutes as currently enacted.
