Disability Law

U.S. Supreme Court Reverses Immigrant Employee's Sentence For Use of False Identification

By David A. McCranie, Esq.

This is a little off-topic, but yesterday the U.S. Supreme Court weighed in on the issue of an employee's use of a fake social security number in obtaining employment in this country .  See Flores-Figueroa v. U.S., decided on 5/4/2009.

Ignacio Flores-Figueroa is a citizen of Mexico who gave his prospective U.S. employer a false name, birth date, and social security number, along with a counterfeit alien registration card, in order to gain employment. The social security number and the number on the alien registration card were not those of a real person.  Later, however, he presented his employer with new counterfeit social security and alien registration cards.  These cards, unlike the earlier alien registration card, used his real name.  But this time the numbers on both cards were real numbers which were in fact assigned to other U.S. citizens.  Based on these facts, Flores-Figueroa was found guilty of "aggravated identity theft" [18 U.S.C. §1028A)(a)(1)], which provides for an enhanced sentence to anyone who "knowingly. . . uses. . . a means of identification of another person. . ." in the commission of another crime.

The key words there are "knowingly" and "another person."  A unanimous U.S. Supreme Court reversed Flores-Figueroa's enhanced sentence, holding that the statute requires proof that the defendant knew that the fake number belonged to another person, not just that the number was false.  Although there was evidence that Flores-Figueroa knew that the social security number that he gave his employer was not his own, there was no evidence that he knew that the number really belonged to someone else.  The ABA Journal has this report on the decision.

Though similar to the federal statute which was at issue in Flores-Figueroa,  §440.105(4)(b)9, Fla. Stat., is worded slightly differently.  Florida's statute makes it unlawful for anyone "to knowingly present or cause to be presented any false, fraudulent, or misleading oral or written statement to any person as evidence of identity for the purpose of obtaining employment or filing or supporting a workers' compensation claim."   Because there is no requirement in Florida's statute that the accused know that the identification actually belongs to "another person," I doubt that the Flores-Figueroa decision would be controlling in a case involving §440.105(4)(b)9.

Full post as published by Florida Workers’ Compensation Law Blog on May 05, 2009 (boomark / email).