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by jrochkind1 2008 days ago
"unlawful conspiracy to transfer a means of identification."

I don't think I've ever heard that phrase before. It's a federal crime? What does it mean?

3 comments

Not even the United States federal government has a list of all the crimes under federal law. There's a funny Twitter account that was tweeting a new federal crime every day for a while.

In case you'd like to know how to research your question when you see a government announcement on a criminal case:

1. Scroll the bottom of the page. If it's the website of the government agency that brought the case, they'll almost always link to a "complaint", which is almost always a PDF.

2. In a criminal complaint, each crime charged is usually called a "count". Search the PDF to find the "count" that matches up with the crime you're interested in. In this case, the means-of-identification charge is count two.

3. Look for a "citation", a reference to a section or other numbered subdivision of a law within that count, in the part that spells out which law they're being charged under. Here: "Title 18, United States Code, Section 1028(a)(7) and 1028(f)".

4. Go to the official website of the government that law comes from. In this case, it's the US federal government. Their info portal is https://www.govinfo.gov/.

5. Search for the citation and find the law and its text. The portal will usually provide some notes after the text of the law about which bills introduced or changed that particular subdivision, and when. Sometimes they'll even provide commentary or citations to cases decided under it. I'll leave that part to you if you're interested.

6. For extra background, try searching for the name of the bill that introduced the law on Wikipedia, or even on Google. You can often get a sense of what was going on at the time, who proposed the bill and how the vote for it panned out, and so on.

It's from this US Federal law around identity theft:

18 U.S. Code § 1028 - Fraud and related activity in connection with identification documents, authentication features, and information

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1028 See subsections 7 and 8.

"Whoever, in a circumstance described in subsection (c) of this section ... knowingly transfers, possesses, or uses, without lawful authority, a means of identification of another person with the intent to commit, or to aid or abet, or in connection with, any unlawful activity that constitutes a violation of Federal law, or that constitutes a felony under any applicable State or local law ... shall be punished as provided in subsection (b) of this section."

(18 USC 1028(a)(7))

"the term “means of identification” means any name or number that may be used, alone or in conjunction with any other information, to identify a specific individual, including any— (A)name, social security number, date of birth, official State or government issued driver’s license or identification number, alien registration number, government passport number, employer or taxpayer identification number; (B)unique biometric data, such as fingerprint, voice print, retina or iris image, or other unique physical representation; (C)unique electronic identification number, address, or routing code; or (D)telecommunication identifying information or access device (as defined in section 1029(e));"

(18 USC 1028(d)(7))

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1028

Criminal complaint with details: https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1347146/downl...