Page:Dubin v. United States.pdf/5

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delivered the opinion of the Court.

There is no dispute that petitioner David Fox Dubin overbilled Medicaid for psychological testing. The question is whether, in defrauding Medicaid, he also committed “[a]ggravated identity theft,” 18 U. S. C. §1028A(a)(1), triggering a mandatory 2-year prison sentence. The Fifth Circuit found that he did, based on a reading of the statute that covers defendants who fraudulently inflate the price of a service or good they actually provided. On that sweeping reading, as long as a billing or payment method employs another person’s name or other identifying information, that is enough. A lawyer who rounds up her hours from 2.9 to 3 and bills her client electronically has committed aggravated identity theft. The same is true of a waiter who serves flank steak but charges for filet mignon using an electronic payment method.

The text and context of the statute do not support such a boundless interpretation. Instead, §1028A(a)(1) is violated when the defendant’s misuse of another person’s means of identification is at the crux of what makes the underlying offense criminal, rather than merely an ancillary feature of a billing method. Here, the crux of petitioner’s overbilling was inflating the value of services actually provided, while