http://redtape.msnbc.com/2010/11/courts ... crime.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;Is using a forged Social Security Number -- but your own name -- to obtain employment or buy a car an identity theft crime? Lately, U.S. courts are saying it's not.
The most recent judicial body to take on the issue, the Colorado Supreme Court, ruled last month that a man who used his real name but someone else's Social Security number to obtain a car loan was not guilty of "criminal impersonation," overturning convictions by lower courts.
That follows a ruling last year by the U.S. Supreme Court that a Mexican man who gave a false SSN to get a job at an Illinois steel plant could not be convicted under federal identity theft laws because he did not knowingly use another person's identifying number. The ruling overturned an opinion by a federal appeals court in St. Louis -- and contradicted earlier findings by circuit courts in the Southeast, upper Midwest and the Gulf states.
It hasn’t been a shutout for identity theft prosecutors, however. In July, an Iowa state appeals court came to the opposite conclusion, affirming a lower court decision that a man who used a California woman's SSN to obtain employment was guilty of breaking that state's identity theft law.
Identity theft can take many forms, but one of the most vexing is so-called "SSN-only" ID theft. In it, an imposter uses a victim's SSN --- sometimes purchased from a broker, sometimes nine digits pulled out of thin air -- to obtain credit or to provide necessary documentation to obtain work. In many cases, SSN "borrowing" is successful and the imposter goes undetected for years.
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The issue pits immigration rights advocates -- who say that undocumented workers are fundamentally different from identity criminals trying to steal credit -- against identity theft victim advocates, who think tougher imposter laws are needed.
“An immigrant who uses a false Social Security number to get a job doesn’t intend to harm anyone, and it makes no sense to spend our tax dollars to imprison them for two years," Chuck Roth, litigation director at the National Immigrant Justice Center in Chicago, told the New York Times after the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling.
But the Identity Theft Resource Center argues that immigrants who use SSNs to get employment often end up putting the numbers to other uses: obtaining credit cards or car loans that can ultimately be blended in with the victim’s credit, sometimes with disastrous results. The center took particular exception to the Colorado ruling.
"This is a dangerous precedent that has now been established and which could permit abuses of the system designed to protect innocent bystanders from fraud," the center said in a statement. "The Colorado State Supreme Court has implied it is permissible to use an SSN that was not issued to an individual to establish new lines of credit."
So, if it's this easy for an immigrant to get a SSN#, wouldn't it be just as easy to then use that SSN# to get, let's say... a Valid Arizona drivers license?
Gov. O'Malley loves him some "New Americans" 