Oregon Supreme Ct - May 14, 2015

by: Abassos • May 14, 2015 • no comments

Identity Theft - Signing a Fingerprint Card and Property Receipt With a False Name is Neither "Uttering" Nor "Converting to One's Own Use"

Uttering: For the purposes of Identity Theft, a document is "uttered" if it is "issued, delivered, published, circulated, disseminated, transferred or tendered”. Here, defendant gave an officer a false name and, with the intent to deceive, signed a fingerprint card and property receipt with the false name. Defendant did not utter the documents because they were created by government officials for their own use. A person could direct another person, like a bank teller, to utter a check without ever creating or possessing it oneself. But here, the documents were merely tendered to defendant for his signature.

Converting: For the purposes of Identity Theft, "converts to the person's own use" means to "take, appropriate, or somehow divest the other person of their personal identification and, with the requisite intent, use that personal identification for the defendant’s own purposes. Merely signing documents with a false name does not appropriate the documents themselves. Note, however, that the state only argued that the two written documents were converted and, therefore, the court does not address the question of whether "the statutory phrase “personal identification” could include other forms of personal information."

The court also rejects defendants argument that giving a false name to an officer is not included within Identity Theft. The original ID Theft statute excluded such a situation, but when "intent to deceive" was added to "intent to defraud", the legislature amended the purview of the statute. Since giving a false name to an officer involves the intent to deceive, it is included within the plain language of the statute. State v Medina, 357 Or 254 (2015).