On Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2026, a Ninth Circuit panel vacated the aggravated identity theft enhancement in the prison term of Tamara Yvonne Motley, the Redondo Beach woman convicted in a long-running Medicare fraud scheme. The ruling leaves Motley's convictions for health care fraud and money laundering intact but sends the case back to the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California to recalculate her total sentence without the mandatory two-year identity theft add-on. Motley was sentenced in late 2023 to 180 months in federal prison and ordered to pay roughly $13.1 million in restitution.
Supreme Court precedent narrowed the law
The panel grounded its decision in the Supreme Court's 2023 ruling in Dubin v. United States, which holds that 18 U.S.C. § 1028A(a)(1) applies only when using another person's identifying information is at the "crux" of the criminal conduct rather than just a billing detail on the side. In the wake of Dubin, courts have said prosecutors cannot stretch ordinary billing practices into aggravated identity theft when the real lie is about what was billed, not who was billed. Commentary from Bradley notes that this narrowed test proved decisive in Motley's appeal.
Panel: identities were incidental
A three-judge Ninth Circuit panel led by Judge Jay Bybee concluded that Motley's decision to enroll Action Medical Equipment & Supply and Kaja Medical Equipment in the names of relatives was not the "crux" of her scheme and therefore could not support the mandatory two-year aggravated identity theft term. According to the panel, the fraud hinged on bogus claims about medical necessity, pricey sham repairs, and kickbacks, not on any trickery over who technically owned the companies, as reported by the Tampa Free Press.
Convictions and the money trail
Motley was convicted in June 2023 on 20 counts of health care fraud, two counts of aggravated identity theft, and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering. She was later sentenced to 180 months in prison and ordered to pay $13,107,422 in restitution. Government filings and the U.S. Attorney's Office say Action and Kaja billed Medicare for more than $24 million between 2006 and 2016, with Medicare actually paying about $13.1 million of that total. See the Justice Department's account from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Central District of California and earlier local coverage, including Hoodline's report on her 15-year sentence.
What comes next
With the Ninth Circuit stripping out the aggravated identity theft stacking, the lower court must now resentence Motley under the correct application of § 1028A and decide on a new total term without the mandatory two-year consecutive add-on. The appellate opinion narrows one of the government's sentencing levers but does not disturb the jury's finding that Motley orchestrated a decade-long scheme that targeted vulnerable beneficiaries, the appellate reporting notes. The case will return to the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California for further proceedings, as reported by the Tampa Free Press.
Broader legal ripple
Legal commentators say Dubin and the Ninth Circuit's application in Motley could invite challenges in other Medicare and billing cases where prosecutors leaned on § 1028A to "stack" mandatory two-year terms. As the Supreme Court wrote in Dubin, "§1028A(a)(1) is violated when the defendant's misuse of another person's means of identification is at the crux of what makes the conduct criminal," a formulation the Ninth Circuit said was missing here. For the full high-court reasoning, see Dubin v. United States.
