Marianne Kolbasuk McGee reports:
Justices on the U.S. Supreme Court seem ready to restrict federal prosecutors’ use of a federal law criminalizing identity theft after hearing a case challenging its application in a Medicaid fraud case.
Traditional identity theft involving appropriation of personal information for criminal ends, such as obtaining fraudulent prescriptions or submitting fake insurance claims, is a long-standing problem. The case before America’s highest court wasn’t about identity theft in that sense. Federal prosecutors in Texas successfully used the aggravated identity theft statute to add two years to the sentence of a man convicted of overbilling Medicaid for mental health services provided by the Austin company he co-owned.
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Legal experts say a ruling in the Dubin case will be important on several levels, including in the prosecution of other cases involving the criminal use of a patient’s protected health information moving forward.
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