Legal Question in Criminal Law in Illinois

arrested under a false name

I was arrested for shoplifting about 6 years ago. This was my second arrest and i had a false id on me. I was finger printed under this false name. i was also arrested once prior to that and given a ticket of arrest and not taken to the station so not finger printed under my real name. at the time i used the false id to get into bars. now i have been accepted to law school. i explained every thing in an addendum and got accepted with scholorship. but i have gotten conflicting answers about practicing law. the board of il bar says not the first time someone has done this after explaining you have matured you should be ok. lawyer first was hesitent and said i should surrender my fake licence to the dmv and my real one would be suspended for a year. now they say if all is good and im accepted just move on no further action is required on my part. so what should i do? should i have this other persons record expunged cause i am concerned that my prints are on file under someone elses name. whats my best course of action and is there any attorney who is very knowledgable in handling these types of issues that can assist. thanks.


Asked on 7/23/08, 12:09 pm

1 Answer from Attorneys
David Shestokas Shestokas, & Associates

Re: arrested under a false name

It really depends upon a number of things, but you should take action to clear the old issues up, and here is why. I recently was admitted to Florida and as part of that process I was fingerprinted, and when I was hired as a State's Attorney in Cook county I was fingerprinted. In both instances a fingerprint background check was run. I do not remember being fingerprinted for the Illinois bar, but that was 20 years ago and I imagine they run fingerprints now. So, it is likely that as an attorney your fingerprint record is going to come up.

Depending upon what happened with the shoplifting matter, the record might be eligible to be expunged at this point and that would be a good action to take.

Also, being proactive about the old fake ID is a good idea, since the Secretary of State's Office has facial recognition software that it uses from time to time to compare pictures in its data base and if two pictures come up under different names, they conduct an investigation, and in some instances the Secretary of State Police have been know to pursue felony fraud charges on that basis.

If you want to practice law, you need to be proactive in clearing up these issues. You do not want to be explaining them three years from now to the ARDC and have them ask what you tried to do about them.

If you have further questions about these issues please visit: http://www.shestokas.com/Ask_an_Attorney.html and pose them. Good luck.

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Answered on 7/23/08, 1:05 pm


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