Case of Interest: People v. David Roberts Kraft

On or about January 17, 2003, the defendant illegally accessed computer records pertaining to an undercover police officer from the California Department of Insurance Fraud Investigations team who was engaged in a fraud investigation. In an attempt to illegally obtain the information from the State Department of Motor Vehicles, Mr. Kraft abused his connections in the Office of the Federal Defender, where he was formerly employed as an investigator. He obtained the information through an investigator at the Federal Defender's Office who would normally have access to the information if there had been a file pending in the Eastern District. By misrepresenting that this was a pending federal case, Kraft obtained DMV computer records information. Kraft would normally not have had access to that information regarding the fictitious identity of the officer absent an actual pending matter in the Eastern District court. Mr. Kraft, a private investigator that works on federal cases as well as local cases has been an investigator for several years prior to this incident. This was the first prosecution and plea pertaining to the actual Department of Insurance undercover operation which ran from approximately November 2002 through January 2003.