Health care fraud case sharpens dispute over what counts as “aggravated identity theft”

Petitions of the week

The Petitions of the Week column highlights a variety of cert petitions not long ago filed in the Supreme Court docket. A checklist of all petitions we’re looking at is offered right here.

In 3 of the previous four terms, the Supreme Courtroom has rejected broad readings of white-collar prison guidelines urged by the federal authorities. All those conclusions worried carry out ranging from wire and pc fraud to tax violations. This week, we spotlight cert petitions that ask the courtroom to think about, amongst other factors, no matter if the govt is correct that a federal identity-theft statute broadly applies to any one who merely states or writes someone else’s name though committing a crime, or rather necessitates intentional misrepresentation of identity.

While most men and women affiliate id theft with owning a bank account stolen, folks use wrong names when committing all sorts of crimes. In 2004, Congress handed sentencing enhancements intended to crack down on this increasing problem. When David Dubin allegedly overbilled Medicaid by $92 for psychological tests carried out on a youthful patient in an emergency shelter in Texas, a federal prosecutor billed Dubin with wellbeing care fraud. The prosecutor also charged him with “aggravated id theft” underneath the 2004 enhancements because Dubin wrote the patient’s name on the monthly bill submitted to Medicaid for reimbursement. A jury convicted Dubin on both of those counts.

Dubin argued that the identity-theft enhancement applies only when somebody intentionally lies about their or someone else’s id as component of a crime, neither of which he did right here. Remarking that “this does not look to be an aggravated identification theft circumstance,” the demo judge nonetheless upheld the verdict beneath binding precedent in the U.S. Courtroom of Appeals for the 5th Circuit. The decide voiced “hope [he would] get reversed on the aggravated identity count.” That hope fell quick by just one vote, as the whole 5th Circuit affirmed by a vote of 9-1-8.

In Dubin v. United States, Dubin asks the justices to give clarity on this concern, which he says has now split 9 of the 13 circuit courts of appeals. The answer matters to Dubin simply because the improvement added two decades onto his jail sentence. But it also issues for the place, he argues, simply because less than the 5th Circuit’s looking at “the added two-yr sentence applies not only to most each individual fee of healthcare fraud, but would also sweep in tax preparers, immigration lawyers, and any person else convicted of distributing any sort on someone’s behalf that is made up of a misrepresentation unrelated to the person’s id.”

A listing of this week’s highlighted petitions is down below:

Momphard v. Knibbs
22-8
Problems: (1) No matter whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit erred in finding that a sensible officer in petitioner’s placement would not have perceived a danger that justified deadly force and (2) no matter whether the 4th Circuit erred in defining respondent’s evidently set up constitutional proper in a common sense by stretching circumstances with superficial similarities for purposes of abrogating certified immunity.

Dubin v. United States
22-10
Difficulty: No matter whether a person commits aggravated identification theft any time they mention or normally recite someone else’s title even though committing a predicate offense.

Cuker Interactive, LLC v. Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman, LLP
22-18
Situation: No matter if a federal courtroom determining a point out-law problem in a individual bankruptcy scenario should apply the discussion board state’s decision-of-law rules or federal preference-of-legislation procedures to figure out what substantive legislation governs.

McCutchen v. United States
22-25
Challenge: No matter if, for reasons of the Fifth Amendment’s getting clause, a delegation of normal legislative rulemaking authority to an company constitutes an inherent restraint on title to any own house that could be subsequently subjected to a possible legislative rule, rendering the bodily getting of the assets non-redressable.