In United States v. Parviz, --- F.4th ---, No. 22-50160 (9th Cir. 2025), the Court affirmed Parviz’s conviction and sentence for one count of making a false statement on a passport application, 18 U.S.C. § 1542, and one count of aggravated identity theft, 18 U.S.C. § 1028A(a)(1), arising from Parviz’s scheme to kidnap C.P., her biological daughter over whom she had lost her parental rights, and to take her out of the United States.
The Court's discussion of section 1028A is probably the most relevant for our practices. The conviction arose from Parviz's application to get her daughter a passport
[T]he passport application’s instructions specified that for any passport application, the applicant—including a minor—is required to appear in person. However, State Department policy allows for an exception to this requirement where the minor is medically unable to be present. See 22 C.F.R. § 51.28(a)(1) (authorizing exceptions to the in-person requirement, “pursuant to guidance issued by the Department”). To fit within this medical exception, Parviz submitted a fraudulent letter on the letterhead of the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital (“Packard Hospital”) in Palo Alto, California. The letter, dated June 7, 2019, purported to be from “Dr. Bret Allen Barker, DNP, FNP,” and it stated that C.P. was under his care, was immunocompromised, and was “unable to leave the medical facility due to her critical medical condition.” The letter claimed that C.P. required “emergency travel to the U.K. for medically necessary operations and a personal appearance for the passport application process would pose an unsurmountable risk to the child’s health.” The letter also included Barker’s name, National Provider Index number (“NPI”), registered nursing number, and signature. Contrary to the representations in this letter, C.P. was in the care of her foster family in Texas, as her foster mother testified at trial; she had no ongoing health issues; she was not immunocompromised; and she had no scheduled medical operations. Barker was a nurse practitioner who had worked at Packard Hospital from March 2019 to April 2019, and he became romantically involved with Parviz in May 2019. But Barker had never met C.P., nor treated her as a patient, and he was not working at Packard Hospital on the date listed in the letter.[U]nder Dubin, the evidence must be sufficient to show that Parviz’s misuse of Barker’s “means of identification” was “at the crux” of what made her passport fraud criminal, viz., the false statements made to secure C.P.’s passport. Moreover, where (as here) the predicate crime involves “fraud or deceit,” Dubin states that “the means of identification specifically must be used in a manner that is fraudulent or deceptive,” meaning that the “fraud or deceit” must go “to ‘who’ is involved.” Id. at 132. The evidence in this case is sufficient to satisfy that standard.[C]rucially, the record evidence supports a rational inference that Parviz assembled the letter and forged Barker’s signature. Barker specifically testified that he did not prepare the letter or sign it. The Government presented Barker’s signature from his DMV records, which enabled the jury to contrast it with the signature on the fraudulent letter. In addition, Collin County officers found an unsigned copy of the letter in Parviz’s car when she was arrested. And, notably, the letter submitted to the passport office misspelled Barker’s middle name.On this record, a rational trier of fact could find that the use of Barker’s “means of identification”—namely, his name, NPI, and registered nursing number—was central to the fraudulent letter’s objective of establishing a medical excuse from the State Department’s regulation requiring a minor’s personal appearance for a passport application.Further, because Parviz prepared the letter and forged Barker’s signature, a rational jury could conclude that there was falsity as to “who” was making the critical misrepresentations contained in the letter.Parviz separately contends that the phrase “without lawful authority” in § 1028A “must mean more than ‘used illegally,’ because the premise of the statute is that a predicate offense has been committed.” In Parviz’s view, because she used Barker’s means of identification “with his complicity,” she did not use such means “without lawful authority.”In United States v. Osuna-Alvarez, 788 F.3d 1183 (9th Cir. 2015), we held that the language of § 1028A “clearly and unambiguously encompasse[d] situations like the present, where an individual grants the defendant permission to possess his or her means of identification, but the defendant then proceeds to use the identification unlawfully.”Dubin explicitly declined to address the statutory meaning of “lawful authority.” See 599 U.S. at 128 n.8 (“The Court need not, and does not, reach the proper interpretation of ‘without lawful authority.’”). Because no intervening Supreme Court or en banc decision is “clearly irreconcilable” with Osuna-Alvarez, we remain bound by its construction of the phrase “without lawful authority” in § 1028A. See Miller v. Gammie, 335 F.3d 889, 900 (9th Cir. 2003) (en banc). And under Osuna-Alvarez, the district court’s instruction was correct, and the evidence was sufficient to find that Parviz had used Barker’s means of identification without lawful authority.
The Court also rejected Parviz's challenges to her sentence.
