A unanimous Supreme Court said in May that illegal workers who use falsified IDs can't be considered identity thieves without proof that they knew they were stealing real people's Social Security and other numbers!
How ridiculous is this?
The court, in an opinion by Justice Stephen Breyer, rejected the government's argument that prosecutors need only show that the identification numbers belong to someone else, regardless of whether the defendant knew it.
So - here we all are trying to deter identity theft, and our Supreme Court says it can only be prosecuted when someone "knows" that the ID was real. This is rarely the case. When people buy and steal IDs, they rarely ever know if they are indeed real.
This case was brought forth due to immigrants who were accessing various IDs to gain employment. However - this ruling I am sure will now make its way into the financial services sector.
Can we turn our brains back on...... please!
Here's a link to one version of the truth.
http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/news/identity-98001-theft-used.html
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