Identity Theft
Under California Penal Code §530.5, a person can be found guilty of identity theft, if he (1) willfully obtains personal identifying information of another person, and (2) uses the identifying information for an unlawful purpose without the person’s consent.
A person can willfully obtain another’s personal information even if he never sought it out, as in where a third party provides a victim’s email password and the person chooses to remember it. Thus if the person uses the unsolicited – but remembered – password for an unlawful purpose, the person can be found guilty of identity theft.
In the recent case In re Rolando S., California’s Fifth District Court of Appeal upheld a juvenile adjudication (similar in many ways to the adult court’s conviction) where the minor charged received an unsolicited text message containing the victim’s email password. The minor used the password to gain access to the victim’s Facebook account, and then used the account to send sexually explicit content.
The minor’s actions constituted identity theft under Penal Code§ 530.5, subdivision (a), even though he initially made no effort to obtain the email password. The court reasoned he chose to remember the password, which was found to satisfy the first element of identity theft.
The second element of identity theft, using the information for an unlawful purpose, does not require that the unlawful purpose is criminal. Committing a civil wrong, here libel, is sufficient to fulfill the second element as it is an unlawful purpose.
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