In a typical phishing scheme, a perpetrator uses fraudulent email messages that appear to come from legitimate businesses. Authentic- looking messages are designed to fool recipients into divulging personal data such as account numbers, passwords, credit card numbers, and social security numbers. It is a crime to use a false pretense in an email or web page to trick a victim into divulging his or her personal information. A “false pretense” is defined as “any false, fictitious, misleading, or fraudulent information or pretense or pretext depicting or including or deceptively similar to the name, logo, website address, email address, postal address, telephone number, or any other identifying information of a for- profit or not-for-profit business or organization or of a government agency, to which the user has no legitimate claim of right.” [See Minn. Stat. § 609.527, subd. 1(c)]. Identity Theft Penalties Under Minnesota Law . The penalties for identity theft range from a misdemeanor to a 20-year felony. The penalties are based upon the amount of loss incurred, the number of direct victims involved, or the related offense. Loss is defined in the Minnesota statute as the value obtained and the expenses incurred as a result of the crime. The full text of the current version of the statute appears below.
609.527 IDENTITY THEFT.
Subdivision 1. Definitions. (a)As used in this section, the following terms have the meanings given them in this subdivision. (b)“Direct victim” means any person or entity described in Minn. Stat. § 611A.01, paragraph (b), whose identity has been transferred, used, or possessed in violation of this section. (c) “False pretense” means any false, fictitious, misleading, or fraudulent information or pretense or pretext depicting or including or deceptively similar to the name, logo, website address, email address, postal address, telephone number, or any other identifying information of a for-profit or not-for-profit business or organization or of a government agency, to which the user has no legitimate claim of right.
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