Grant Schulte reports:
Anyone who uses false personal information to commit fraud can be found guilty of identity theft in Iowa, even if he didn’t know the information belonged to someone else, the Iowa Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday.
The decision stemmed from the arrest of an illegal immigrant, Jose Abel Garcia, who was caught using a California woman’s identification number in Marshall County.
The ruling came one year after a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court opinion that required federal prosecutors to show that alleged identity thieves knew the stolen personal information belonged to a real person. The Supreme Court decision, Flores-Figueroa vs. United States, addressed the same conflict within federal law
Read more in the Des Moines Register.