Dubin v. United States

In Dubin v. United States, the Supreme Court reviewed the conviction of David Dubin, who had inflated billing claims for psychological testing submitted to Texas Medicaid. Although Dubin used a patient’s Medicaid identification number in the fraudulent billing, the core offense was healthcare fraud rather than identity theft. The government charged him with aggravated identity theft under 18 U.S.C. § 1028A, which imposes a mandatory two-year sentence when a person uses another person’s means of identification during and in relation to certain predicate offenses. The Court held that this provision does not apply merely because a defendant’s fraud incidentally involves another person’s identity information; instead, the use must be central to the underlying crime. The decision reversed the Fifth Circuit and remanded the case, clarifying that the aggravated identity theft statute targets identity theft itself, not all frauds involving misused identifiers.

The Supreme Court unanimously reversed the Fifth Circuit, holding that aggravated identity theft requires the identity information to be at the crux of the criminal activity, and remanded the case for further proceedings.

Whether the use of a patient’s Medicaid number in a healthcare fraud billing scheme constitutes aggravated identity theft under 18 U.S.C. § 1028A when the fraud was not aimed at stealing that patient’s identity.

The ruling limits federal prosecutors’ ability to stack mandatory two-year identity theft sentences onto ordinary fraud convictions, providing clearer statutory boundaries and protecting defendants from disproportionate punishment in cases where identity misuse is incidental.