Search Violated Constitutional Rights

The Weld County, Colorado law enforcement raid known as “Operation Numbers Game” amounted to a violation of identity theft suspects’ Fourth Amendment rights, according to the Colorado Supreme Court. In a 4-3 decision, the court ruled “a prosecutor improperly searched thousands of files in a tax preparer's office while looking for illegal immigrants who had committed identity theft” and it affirmed a lower court’s decision to “throw out evidence against a defendant who had sued,” according to the Los Angeles Times.

Obviously, that’s not how Weld County District Attorney Ken Buck would have liked to have seen things. “I'm disappointed. We have 1,338 people whose identities are being used, and we can't even notify them they are the victims of identify theft,” the Greeley Tribune quotes the DA. “We had hoped to make an impact on identify theft in Weld, and I think that won't happen at this point, and it's a serious problem in Weld County.”

The problem investigators sought to target was that of undocumented workers. Back in 2008, the district attorney’s office had searched the office of a translation and tax center in Greeley, Colorado, combing through 5,000 files in hopes of finding instances where workers had used Social Security numbers that did not belong to them.  As a result, about 30 illegal workers pleaded guilty to identity theft and were turned over for deportation, the Times reports.

In this case, defendant, Ramon Gutierrez, as a taxpayer “has a reasonable expectation of privacy in his or her tax returns and return information, even when that information is in the custody of a tax preparer,” according to court ruling cited by The Denver Post.

Among the immigration rights and privacy groups that protested the DA’s conduct was the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado, which was pleased by the ruling. The Post reports that Buck doesn’t plan to appeal the decision, meaning Operation Numbers Game is effectively over.