⚖ Oral Arguments, with Context

The Second Circuit hears United States versus Carter, an appeal arising from fraudulent pandemic-relief applications. People supplied their personal and banking information for applications to the Small Business Administration. The applications falsely claimed that they owned businesses with employees. The agency paid advances into their accounts, and part of the money went back to the scheme's organizers. A jury convicted the defendants of fraud and aggravated identity theft. That separate identity-theft offense carries a mandatory two-year consecutive sentence. But using someone's name during a fraud is not automatically aggravated identity theft: the Supreme Court requires the misuse of identity to be central to what makes the conduct criminal. Here, listen for the distinction between lying about a person's business eligibility and misusing that person's identity, and for whether supplying information authorized its use this way. The argument also examines whether counting the people whose identities were used improperly increased a sentence on top of the identity-theft punishment.

United States of America v. Carter (No. 25-565) — U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, argued November 5, 2026.