A property offense involving unlawful taking, appropriation, retention, or control over another’s property or value. It is defined by the required intent and by value thresholds or property types where applicable. It does not include lawful claims of right or conduct that does not satisfy the required intent element. It protects ownership interests and commonly drives restitution, forfeiture exposure, and sentencing outcomes. The concept is generally stable, though value thresholds and grading schemes are revised over time.

Principle

Seizing and exploiting personal identifiers without consent to assume another's legal or financial persona, thereby enabling further crimes or economic advantages at the victim's expense.

Demonstration

An offender steals mailed tax documents containing social security numbers and files a fraudulent tax return to receive a refund, using the victim's identity to misappropriate government funds.

Misapplication

Labeling all privacy breaches as identity theft even when leaked data is insufficient for impersonation (e.g., a list of names without identifiers) or when the primary harm is reputational rather than fraudulent use of identity.

Consequence

Proper recognition leads to criminal charges against perpetrators, victim remediation options like credit freezes and restitution, and triggers for institutions to detect related fraud; it also guides resource allocation for identity protection.

Reversal

A person voluntarily sharing their personal identifiers with a trusted agent for legitimate services; because there is consent and legitimate purpose, this is not identity theft.

Boundary

Covers acts involving personal identifiers used to impersonate or defraud; excludes unauthorized data exposure that does not enable impersonation and purely synthetic constructions that do not initially correspond to a real person's identifiers (see synthetic identity fraud).

Semantic Tension

Overlap with 'fraud' and 'privacy breach' creates tension: identity theft requires use of identifiers for impersonation or fraud, whereas privacy breaches may not lead to identity theft unless those data are exploited.

Synthesis

Identity theft is the criminal practice of taking and using another person’s personal identifiers without consent to impersonate or defraud, distinct from mere data exposure and from synthetic identity schemes that blend real and fabricated data.