Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/22-10_ifjn.pdf
Page Number: 29

4 

DUBIN v. UNITED STATES 

 GORSUCH, J., concurring
GORSUCH, J., concurring in judgment 

for filet mignon using an electronic payment method” has
not  committed  aggravated  identity  theft.    Ante,  at  1,  11. 
Why not, exactly?  In one sense, the “means of identifica-
tion” (the credit card) lies “at the crux” of the fraud.  The 
restaurant uses it to charge the customer for a product it
never supplied.  Maybe that feels less distasteful than a sce-
nario  in  which  an  overseas  hacker  steals  an  individual’s 
credit card information and deploys it to order luxury goods 
on Amazon.  But the Constitution’s promise of due process 
means that criminal statutes must provide rules “knowable
in advance,” not intuitions discoverable only after a prose-
cutor has issued an indictment and a judge offers an opin-
ion.  Percoco  v.  United  States,  598  U. S.  ___,  ___  (2023) 
(GORSUCH, J., concurring in judgment) (slip op., at 6). 

Not yet convinced?  Consider some tweaks to the Court’s 
hypothetical.  Suppose that, instead of misrepresenting the
cut  of  its  steaks,  a  restaurant  charged  a  customer  for  an
appetizer  he  ordered  that  never  arrived.    What  about  an 
appetizer he never ordered?  An additional entrée?  Three? 
Three  plus  a  $5,000  bottle  of  Moët?  How  about  a  Boeing
737?  Now suppose the restaurant ran the customer’s credit 
card for the same steak twice.  What if it waited an hour to 
do so?  A day?  A year?  What if the waiter gave the credit 
card information to a different employee at the same res-
taurant to run the charge?  A different employee at a differ-
ent restaurant?  What if the restaurant sold the customer’s 
credit card information on the dark web, and another res-
taurant ran the card for filet mignon?  On the Court’s tell-
ing, the “crux” of the fraud in some of these examples lies 
merely in “how and when services were provided,” while in
others the “crux” involves “who received the services.”  Ante, 
at 20.  But how to tell which is which? 

The  Court’s  “crux”  test  seemingly  offers  no  sure  way 
through  this  “blizzard  of  . . .  hypotheticals.”  Ibid.,  n. 10. 
Nor is that because I have cherry-picked “hard cases.”  Ibid. 
Scenarios  like  these—and  variations  of  them—illustrate