Defending Colorado Identity Theft and Financial Exploitation Charges
October 27, 2026
Hate crime enhancements allow Colorado prosecutors to increase criminal penalties. A misdemeanor assault could become a felony with years in prison if bias motivation is proven. These enhancements don’t require explicit hatred; prosecutors just need to show that prejudice based on protected characteristics played a role.
At the Law Office of Jacob Martinez, our Denver criminal defense attorneys defend clients statewide, challenging subjective or ambiguous evidence. Many alleged “proofs” of bias have reasonable alternative explanations.
What Are Colorado Hate Crime[...]There are many subtle ways that people express bias every day. That’s why in many Colorado court cases, bias is hard to prove.
It can be as simple as providing someone slower service or choosing to hire someone else for no real reason. However, in some cases, bias is a little more obvious. Take a recent Colorado hate crime, for example.
A white man stabbed a Black man in the neck in a fast food restaurant unprovoked. When asked why [...]
Crimes are committed every day for a variety of reasons, but there is a special category of crimes called hate crimes that are classified as being motivated by specific personal biases and can have serious repercussions for the accused.
In Colorado, there are a couple of hate crimes that have made waves lately. The first was an assault on a Sikh business owner in Jefferson County who was told to “go back to your own country” before being struck by [...]
As the country seemingly continues to spin out in the wake of a confusing world-wide pandemic in a myriad of ways, Colorado’s recent history with bias-motivated crimes is garnering ever-increasing attention locally.
Late last year, in fact, the Denver Post reported that hate crimes in Colorado had seen a 16 percent uptick, even though the nation as a whole was seeing hate crime numbers decrease.
Now, amidst the coronavirus pandemic, the Post has recently highlighted that state lawmakers are seeing [...]
We can all admit that tensions in our country are high right now. No matter who you voted for or what you look like, it’s hard to turn a blind eye to the rising levels of violence through both large-scale and short-scale incidents.
Unfortunately, Colorado has the numbers to prove that hate crimes and other forms of violence are truly more prevalent than in the past.
Data from Colorado law enforcement shows that reports of hate crimes doubled from 2017 [...]
Defending against Colorado identity theft and financial exploitation charges often begins with a close look at what prosecutors can actually prove about knowledge, intent, permission, authority, and the movement or use of money and identifying information.
Colorado identity theft can be charged as a class 4 felony, while criminal exploitation of an at-risk person involving $500 or more can be charged as a class 3 felony. Related allegations may also involve possession of financial devices, gathering identity information by deception, [...]
There is no single statute of limitations that applies to every Colorado sexual assault or sex crime allegation. Depending on the exact charge, the alleged victim’s age, when the conduct allegedly occurred, whether DNA evidence identifies a suspect, when the offense was reported, and whether the accused spent time outside Colorado, prosecutors may have 20 years, a different statutory period, or no time limit at all.
Those distinctions matter most when an allegation surfaces years or even decades after the [...]
Extradition is about where a criminal case will be handled—not whether the person is guilty. If someone is arrested in Colorado on another state’s warrant, the immediate questions are usually whether to waive extradition, whether bail is available, how long the process may take, and what can actually be challenged before the person is returned.
The same issue can run in the other direction. A person may be arrested in another state because Colorado issued the warrant. In that situation, [...]