In Commonwealth v. Mattier(2006), the Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) ruled that the evidence was insufficient to support Mattier’s (defendant) conviction of identity fraud, but affirmed the convictions of Mattier and codefendant Grice on indictments charging them with conspiracy to commit larceny and attempted larceny. The charges against the defendants arose from their attempt to defraud One Fund Boston — a charitable organization devoted to assisting the victims of the Boston Marathon bombings — “of approximately $2 million by claiming that a long-deceased aunt had been injured in the … bombings.” The claim form that Mattier submitted to One Fund Boston was accompanied by “a signed letter purporting to be from Dr. Peter A le viagra ordonnance. Burke, chief of trauma services at Boston Medical Center, stating that both of the aunt’s legs had been amputated as a result of injuries from the marathon bombings.” “Mattier requested that the fund’s claim disbursement check be made payable to him as his aunt’s representative at his Boston address.” Administrators of the fund “suspected that Mattier’s claim form might be fraudulent and conducted an internal investigation. After learning that the aunt died in 2000, they rejected the claim” and conveyed the results of their investigation to law enforcement authorities. “The essence of the identity fraud prosecution of Mattier was that he] downloaded a template of a letter from the Boston Medical Center onto his computer, composed his letter to One Fund Boston on the template, and copied Dr. Burke’s signature onto that letter.”
In its decision reversing Mattier’s identity fraud conviction, the SJC noted that in order to procure a conviction under the identity fraud statute, the Commonwealth was required to prove that Mattier “‘posed as another person,’” and that he “‘falsely represented himself, directly or indirectly, as’” Dr. Burke. The Court concluded that “although Mattier misrepresented the authenticity of the letter to One Fund Boston in claiming that the letter was from Dr. Burke, nothing in the evidence established that he ever falsely represented himself to be Dr. Burke. Mattier submitted the claim to the fund under his own name.”movie HHhH