The First Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a defendant’s convictions for Social Security benefits and passport fraud and ruled that the district court had not abused its discretion in calculating a $175,757 restitution award in favor of the Social Security Administration (SSA) despite uncertainty regarding the defendant’s earnings records. United States v. Gonzalez, No. 24-2086 (1st Cir. July 30, 2026).
Napoleon Gonzalez had assumed the identity of his brother, Guillermo, who died in infancy in 1939. Napoleon had his own Social Security number but had obtained a second one in Guillermo’s name. When Napoleon turned 62 in 1999, he applied for Social Security benefits under his own name. He asked the SSA to update his earnings record to include earnings under the name Guillermo, representing that he had assumed that name in memory of his grandfather. Several years later, when his brother Guillermo would have turned 62, Napoleon applied for Social Security benefits under that name, falsely representing that he had not previously filed a benefit application. For approximately 20 years, Napoleon used both identities to collect Social Security retirement benefits under two separate accounts. In addition, he used Guillermo’s identity to obtain passports.
The scheme came to light in 2020 when a Maine detective discovered two state identification cards with different names, Social Security numbers, and birth dates but matching addresses and photographs. The detective referred the investigation to the SSA for possible Social Security fraud and to the State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service for possible passport fraud.
A grand jury in the United States District Court for the District of Maine indicted Napoleon on six counts, including identity theft, Social Security benefit fraud, furnishing false information to the SSA, making a false statement in a passport application and using the passport obtained through that false statement, and mail fraud. Napoleon was convicted on all six counts. The district court sentenced him to five years’ probation and ordered $175,757 in restitution. Napoleon appealed, asserting that the restitution order was excessive.
The First Circuit upheld the restitution order, noting that the record did not clearly establish which portion of Napoleon’s earnings under Guillermo’s identity had been credited to Napoleon’s earnings record without being removed from Guillermo’s. The government had proposed four alternative methods for reconstructing Napoleon’s earnings to calculate the SSA’s losses, each resting on different assumptions about how his fraudulent earnings records should be reconciled. The district court had adopted the method that assumed that earnings under Guillermo’s identity had been incompletely copied onto Napoleon’s own record but that Napoleon had never worked under both names in the same year. Accordingly, it had credited him with the higher of the two years’ reported earnings without combining them. The First Circuit found that this approach was supported by Napoleon’s own admission that he had used only one identity at a time. The court further noted that the alternative methods produced implausible year-to-year fluctuations in reported earnings that the adopted method avoided. Noting that restitution calculations are not held to standards of scientific precision, the court affirmed the $175,757.00 award.
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