Colorado Supreme Court screws up on identity theft

Washington Times:

The Colorado Supreme Court ruled Monday that authorities violated the constitutional privacy rights of suspected undocumented workers when they seized their tax records in an identity-theft investigation, a decision that infuriated foes of illegal immigration.

In a 4-3 decision, the court held that Weld County investigators lacked probable cause to search a tax preparer's office in search of the tax records of illegal immigrants suspected of identity theft. The court also ruled that the tax filings were confidential.

The decision affirmed the ruling of the Weld County District Court, which had suppressed the evidence against one of the defendants, Ramon Gutierrez, ruling that the search violated his Fourth Amendment rights.

More than 70 people were charged with criminal impersonation and identity theft after the 2008 search of the office of Amalia's Translation and Tax Service in Greeley. During the investigation, known as Operation Numbers Game, authorities copied the files of 1,338 tax filers thought to have used false or stolen Social Security numbers.

The district court ruled that the Weld County Sheriff's Office conducted "an exploratory search" that allowed investigators to rummage through "the confidential records of thousands of persons based on nothing more than a suspicion that one or more of them may have committed a crime."

"The warrant in the present case did not identify the tax preparer or Gutierrez as the target of the search. It made no showing of probable cause as to Gutierrez or any other client of Amalia's Tax Service," Justice Michael Bender said in the 76-page majority opinion.

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I think this ruling is a mistake and hopefully the US Supreme Court will get a chance to overturn it. The probably cause is that the tax preparer was aiding and abetting several individuals engage in identity theft. That the defendant was one of those being aided is proof in and of itself of the probable cause. The court made an obtuse ruling to let an apparently guilty person escape justice.