[legal-advicer]

Awe, so the person didn't know, we shouldnt hold him to the law? Is that it?

If the person didn't know he had someone else's SSN, then he could not have committed fraud. Fraud is "an intentional perversion of truth for the purpose of inducing another in reliance upon it to part with some valuable thing belonging to him or to surrender a legal right." Black's Law Dictionary. Fraud is not easily proved, either in criminal or civil cases, and must be pled by plaintiffs/prosecutors with great specificity. The Colorado case, Montes-Rodriguez v. People, 2010 WL 4276059 (Colo. Oct. 25, 2010), is instructive. There, Mr. Montes-Rodriguez was charged with criminal impersonation for using a false Social Security number on an application for an automobile loan. The Colorado Supreme Court said that the trial court wrongly focused only on the incorrect Social Security number. The accused's loan application included his correct name, current and previous addresses, employment information, salary, and more. He did not pretend to be anyone else but himself. The court noted, also that one is not required to give his SSN in order to apply for a loan, and there was no evidence that the dealership required SSNs in order to ascertain the legal status of applicants. Accordingly, the state supreme court found that the accused had been wrongly convicted of that particular crime. That doesn't mean that he did not violate some Federal law, subject to a civil penalty (i.e. a fine). I don't have time to look that up. But he clearly wasn't pretending to be who he wasn't, and there was no fraud involved.