00:00:00:00 – 00:00:24:29
Unknown
Let me ask you a question. When does borrowing something become stealing? When does a bad business decision become a criminal offense? Can you steal something that you already own? And can you actually be charged with theft for taking something that someone willingly gave to you? Most people think that theft is pretty straightforward. You take something that doesn’t belong to you, and that’s theft.
00:00:25:06 – 00:00:58:10
Unknown
But in Pennsylvania, the law is a lot more complicated than that. So today we’re going to break down theft crimes for you. The big ones retail theft and shoplifting to receiving stolen property, theft by unlawful taking, theft by deception, insurance fraud and embezzlement and everything in between. We’ll talk about what separates a misunderstanding from a misdemeanor and what separates a misdemeanor from a felony, and how seemingly innocent decisions can sometimes turn into criminal charges.
00:00:58:12 – 00:01:23:24
Unknown
Because there’s one thing we know for sure here. Just because someone says you stole something does not mean that the law says you did. This is now we defend. Let’s get into it.
00:01:23:27 – 00:01:33:29
Unknown
All right, so, Justin, I’m going to go to you first. Today’s about all about theft, right? A lot of theft crimes. I want to talk about kind of what actually constitutes theft.
00:01:34:01 – 00:01:54:24
Unknown
Justin did our outline for today, so I’m going to give you first dibs at it. You want to tell us a little bit about what theft is generally. Absolutely. So when most people think of theft, you know, like you said, shoplifting or stealing something from someone, a store, a business, etc. however, Pennsylvania has numerous different theft related offenses.
00:01:54:26 – 00:02:28:01
Unknown
Theft charges can arise from taking someone’s personal property, stealing money from an employer, using someone’s property without permission, receiving or possessing stolen property. Deceiving someone into giving you money or property. Failing to return leased or rented property. Those are kind of just generally, you know, what type of thefts we see here in Pennsylvania. And we’re going to get into a number of the chapter 39 crimes that constitute theft here in Pennsylvania.
00:02:28:02 – 00:02:52:29
Unknown
Right. Because chapter 39 really is, what this is under, you know, a lot of these different ones, but I think are all of them. Chapter 39. I mean, we have some things like, you know, robbery and robberies under 3701. So it’s a little bit different, right? We’ll probably hit on burglary just briefly. Most people, when they think of burglary, you know, they think of someone breaking into their house or or their car and stealing something.
00:02:52:29 – 00:03:09:15
Unknown
However, the way it’s defined here in Pennsylvania. It doesn’t require a theft. So, you know, we’ll we’ll touch on that briefly. Yeah. And I think that we might as well just do that now. I think that’s an interesting point because, you know, you always hear, you know, on the movies, you know, I got burglarized or I got robbed.
00:03:09:17 – 00:03:31:27
Unknown
Right. Yeah. And those are, those are really different things, actually, in the law. Robbery and burglary are entirely different crimes. They mean different things. And frankly, burglary doesn’t always mean there was a property crime like theft that happened. Right, right now you were just touching on that. So, the way I understand burglary, and I want to kind of get your take on this, too, is, you know, basically the crime of burglary.
00:03:31:29 – 00:04:14:06
Unknown
Guys, it’s under title 35. It’s 3502, I believe, is burglary. You can commit that crime by entering a structure without permission. And this structure, by the way, could be a home, a business, a shed, unoccupied or occupied, meaning people in it or not in it at the time. And that actually affects the great Asian of that and the seriousness of that burglary, whether it is occupied, whether it is a home, whether it is a business or a shed or something else, that is not a home structure, because obviously the law is going to protect someone’s home more than it will an outbuilding, that there’s little risk of a danger if no one’s even
00:04:14:06 – 00:04:31:26
Unknown
there. Yeah, but the but, you know, you only not only do you have to enter the structure, but the other part of burglary is you have to commit a crime within that structure or have the intent to commit a crime within that structure. Right. Yep. And so that could be a lot of different crimes, not just theft. So tell me about that a little bit.
00:04:31:27 – 00:05:02:19
Unknown
Yeah. So like you said, the grading is affected by whether or not a person is present or not. It’s also affected by whether or not the building or structure is, what is it? It’s adapted for overnight accommodations. Right. So essentially, if someone can live there or sleep there, that also will affect the grading. And just like you said, burglary is really entering one of those structures occupied, unoccupied, adapted or not adapted for overnight accommodations with the intent to commit a crime they’re in or committing a crime there in.
00:05:02:21 – 00:05:23:03
Unknown
So, like you just said, you know, theft does not have to be that crime. It could be a bodily injury crime. Be a number of things. Right. Yeah. And, I mean, we can be somebody commit can commit the crime of burglary with the intent to enter a structure of with the intent. Sorry. When they enter the structure to commit the crime of assault or rape.
00:05:23:06 – 00:05:44:14
Unknown
Or criminal mischief. Even go in there and trash the place. Right? You can commit burglary with those crimes. You don’t have to go in there to attempting to steal something, right? I’m going to tell you guys a quick story about a burglary case that I prosecuted back when I was a prosecutor. I actually think I talked about this on a prior podcast episode, but I lost the trial as a prosecutor, and I probably should have, because I was overzealous and young at the time.
00:05:44:21 – 00:06:09:15
Unknown
And probably this. I could have won the burglary, which is why I took it to trial, but I probably shouldn’t have because it wasn’t really a major burglary. I had a guy who, he punched through a window, a glass window in an attempt to, I think he was trying to, like, grab something inside the window, but he ultimately didn’t get the item inside the window.
00:06:09:15 – 00:06:24:29
Unknown
I think it was, like, out of his reach or something. But in any event, when he punched the window, he cut his arm and, like, left blood behind, and they got DNA and all this stuff and turns out it was him. So they charged him with burglary. But keeping in mind here, all he really did was punch through a broken window.
00:06:24:29 – 00:06:43:02
Unknown
And that was pretty much it. Right. And the theory was that he was intending to steal an item in the property, i.e. theft in this case prosecuted. The case went to trial. I mean, it was pretty clear that he was intending to grab that thing. It was like a piece of like a tool or something. But ultimately it was unsuccessful.
00:06:43:02 – 00:06:56:24
Unknown
And I think the jury just looked at it and was like, guys like, come on. He broke a window like, you know, and I had like blood in the snow that like, as he’s walking away and like, footsteps and all this and they were just like, this isn’t like a felony burglary charge, you know, they just didn’t get to that level.
00:06:56:24 – 00:07:26:13
Unknown
So that’s just an idea. And I was I remember explaining, you know, burglary in two juries and you have to kind of break the threshold of the home. Right? Like you get to walk into the door where you can’t ring someone’s doorbell and they come to the door and you custom out and yell at them, but don’t actually go inside right now if you punch them as they’re standing inside the house, you’ve entered the structure with your arm committed the crime of assault that could be considered burglary in a way.
00:07:26:15 – 00:07:43:18
Unknown
And I think of it, Tim, I think we talked about this, the, those old ADT security commercials where you got those numbers spinning around the house. That’s the threshold of the home, right? And, in that scenario, that factual pattern, you kind of break the threshold even though you don’t really go in there and do anything.
00:07:43:19 – 00:08:00:23
Unknown
Right. Right. And you can also you can be charged with a temp just like any other offense you can be charged with in Kuwait offenses. So, I mean, if you are trying to pry the door open with like a crowbar but you don’t actually get in, you’re still potentially going to get hit with burglary. A couple other things about burglary that are kind of interesting.
00:08:00:23 – 00:08:23:01
Unknown
So if there is a if you if there’s a burglary in a home and a person is present, that is a crime of violence. So whether or not you intend or do commit a crime of violence or assault or anything inside, if a person is present, it is under 3502 a one two little I that falls under the definition of crime of violence.
00:08:23:01 – 00:08:57:17
Unknown
It’s a strike offense. And it certainly if you go into a home and you are attempting or you’re trying to commit some kind of bodily injury crime inside, then that is also a crime of violence, which is a strike. So those are both very significant offenses. And then the other thing, the other two things that are kind of interesting about burglary, well, I guess it may only be one thing, is that you actually, let’s say that you do go into a structure, but your your intention is to steal something and you actually do steal something in Pennsylvania.
00:08:57:18 – 00:09:17:19
Unknown
You can’t actually be sentenced on both the theft and the burglary. So if the if the crime that’s, that is committed inside is a theft, you actually can only be sentenced on one or the other, not both. Right. And then the other interesting thing about burglary is that under common law, the crime that you had that you intended to commit had to be a felony.
00:09:17:26 – 00:09:39:01
Unknown
Pennsylvania does not require that. Pennsylvania require the way the statutes worded is any crime. So if you if you go into a structure and you intend to or you do commit any crime, whether it’s a misdemeanor or felony, you’re going to end up with a felony burglary. Yeah. You brought up a really three actually really good points there that I want to just unpack a little bit.
00:09:39:01 – 00:09:59:25
Unknown
So the crime of violence part that you talked about. So this is more than just being a strike. And guys, just so you understand what a strike offense is, if you stack multiple strike offenses, your penalty on like a second strike type of crime, crime of violence is innumerable higher. We’re talking multiple years in prison. It’s a mandatory ten years.
00:09:59:26 – 00:10:20:29
Unknown
Yeah. If it’s a decade. Yeah. So if you have a second strike and then you can get third strikes and things like that. So you have to consider when you can get convicted or plead guilty to something like this that you just caught a strike. But it’s more than a strike. It’s also if you commit a crime of violence of which this is classified, that scenario, you become a person not to possess a firearm.
00:10:21:01 – 00:10:46:01
Unknown
Right? Well, even under any burglary burglaries in a new I’m just on my crimes of violence generally, even other crimes of violence makes you a person not to possess. You also get enhanced penalties for that crime itself, right? By its very nature. So there’s a lot of other things that if you commit that type of a crime. And again, this is a burglary of a structure adapted for overnight accommodation with a person present at the time that is considered a crime of violence.
00:10:46:01 – 00:11:02:08
Unknown
And that’s just because of the risk is so much higher for violence to actually happen. Yeah. Even if it didn’t happen, you know, it’s still considered a crime of violence, which is why I mean, it’s we I think in the pop culture, we think of burglars like the, the sort of quintessential cat burglar kind of guy with, like, the burglar.
00:11:02:09 – 00:11:25:00
Unknown
Yeah. You know, he’s got the leather gloves. Maybe he goes in and he’s a safe cracker, but he never actually intends to hurt anybody. But burglary is a crime that, as you said, carries with it an inherent risk of violence, either on the part of the person committing the offense or on the victim of the offense. And so for that reason, it is looked at as a violent crime, especially, like I said, if someone’s there.
00:11:25:06 – 00:11:50:14
Unknown
Yeah, yeah. And again, I mean, burglary can also be what we see a lot where people go into people’s other homes and assault them, you know, attack them and that that’s burglary as well as assault and potentially aggravated assault if there’s serious injury and things like that. Okay. The other point you talked about was how you cannot be essentially sentenced on both burglary and the underlying crime that you committed in the house.
00:11:50:14 – 00:12:11:05
Unknown
Well, I think it’s specifically if my memory of the statute is correct, I think it’s specifically for the theft. Right. So if you if you commit a burglary and an assault, you can be sentenced on both of those. But if you go in and commit a burglary and your intention was to steal like a television or something, you can’t be sentenced on both the theft of the television and the burglary.
00:12:11:05 – 00:12:28:01
Unknown
Right? So is that that’s essentially like the sentences of the crimes merge, right? Because it is an element of the crime. Yes. The underlying burglary has the actual element of that crime in it. Right? Yeah. And that’s why you you can’t be sentenced on both separately and consecutively. Yeah. And I mean, it’s kind of weird because it’s not truly merger.
00:12:28:02 – 00:12:47:25
Unknown
I mean, they’re different offenses, right? I mean, they’re different elements. So the statute tries to be fair by giving you something resembling merger so that you’re not getting doubled up on, at least in the case of like, a burglary and a property theft. Yeah. And I just blanked. What’s the third thing again that you brought? The third thing was the common law.
00:12:47:26 – 00:13:18:15
Unknown
The common law definition of burglary required a felony offense. Right. So this is an example of where Pennsylvania is more strict because the underlying crime that you attempt to commit could be a misdemeanor, right? In its own right. Yeah. I mean, you still get the felony burglary on top of that. And and as a prosecutor, I mean, like, I, I had at least one burglary case that I remember where I mean, it’s any crime, which means there really isn’t any crime that’s too insignificant to get you to the burglary territory.
00:13:18:21 – 00:13:38:06
Unknown
I had a case where a guy broke into a place, and the inference that I had the court that I got the court to draw was that the intent was for this individual to use drugs inside the premises. That’s a burglary. Interesting. Because it’s any crime. The intent to commit the crime of drug use or drug possession inside the premises I have was sufficient in that.
00:13:38:06 – 00:14:00:06
Unknown
Okay. So you saw that prosecuted as a burglary. I prosecuted it as a burglary. And actually, interestingly enough, when I think of burglary, I think of a crime that you’re intending to commit that has a victim, right? Like property damage. But it’s it’s any crime. Yeah, it is, it does. The statute does say any crime. So actual possession of drugs in a property could be burglary realistically.
00:14:00:07 – 00:14:21:17
Unknown
I mean, I would never have I probably would not have taken that case trial. It didn’t end up going to trial. We had other issues. But but the the reason that I was so vigorous with it at the early stages is because there was actually another burglary that this person had committed where he severely assaulted the homeowner, actually came home during the burglary, and he he it was an older guy.
00:14:21:17 – 00:14:40:15
Unknown
He attacked this guy with a metal rod. And it was an older gentleman severely injured him and also stole a firearm. So we had that case looming in the background. And so I went after him pretty aggressively on the on this other case too. But in the end, my intention was to plead that down to something like a criminal trespass or something like that.
00:14:40:17 – 00:15:04:08
Unknown
Right. Your target was the bigger right. Exactly. And guys, I mean, that brings up a whole nother issue that you need to be aware of. All of us having been former prosecutors. And we know prosecutors analyze cases this way where if you have multiple different separate crimes, you may be prosecuted differently for what would be considered a lesser crime because of the other stuff that you being prosecuted for.
00:15:04:12 – 00:15:35:17
Unknown
That’s just obvious, I think, and inherent and prosecutors absolutely do do that. And, you need to be careful out there and make sure you have a good attorney, because you could be kind of taxed in a way for other crimes because of other things you’ve done. And your attorney could potentially protect you from that, because when it comes down to the factors and the the elements of the law, that’s where we have to kind of go to bat for you and make sure that we’re making sure they are held to the right standard and keeping them fair on how they’re prosecuting it.
00:15:35:18 – 00:16:05:05
Unknown
And that and your point is exactly right, because part of the reason why the posture was what it was in the early stage is because he did not have a defense attorney who was, I think, who saw the issues the same way we did. And so, like if it were me defending this guy, I would have basically I would have known, you know, the main issue is the bigger burglary that like that is going to be very hard for us to get out of this one is not it’s kind of academic in the sense that it doesn’t really matter what happens to this one.
00:16:05:05 – 00:16:24:18
Unknown
It does because he could get consecutive prison time. But you come into the prelim and you try to negotiate that and get a sense of like, okay, we know that this one’s going to be the harder one to resolve. So we’re going to on this second one, the lesser of the two, we’re going to play ball a little bit and that’ll get us to a global resolution.
00:16:24:23 – 00:16:46:16
Unknown
But instead he was very obstinate at the prelim took a hearing. So so I mean if I’m if I’m having to present a prima facie case for any of the charges, I’m going for all the charges, I think a fit whether they will stick at trial or not, that’s up to a jury. But that was why the burglary was brought at the preliminary hearing stage, and that’s why we made the argument we did.
00:16:46:20 – 00:17:06:21
Unknown
If they had agreed to waive the preliminary hearing and then negotiate further, then we might have dropped the burglary earlier on. Yeah. And guys, Tim’s point is very well taken. I mean, these are the peaks behind the curtain that we, as all of us, as former prosecutors can kind of give you now as a dedicated defense attorneys, because we know how they handle that.
00:17:06:21 – 00:17:33:26
Unknown
If you fight the fight that you shouldn’t have to fight on the little stuff and then they tax you on the big stuff. I mean, these are the types of things that so many people don’t understand because they’re so tunnel visioned into this. I’m only here today for this crime and like they don’t see the bigger picture. Whereas the defense attorney will play the chess game, they’re playing the long game and they’ll see the bigger picture and they’ll negotiate that stuff and they’ll push where they need to push and not where they don’t need to push.
00:17:33:26 – 00:17:55:03
Unknown
That will get you taxed. This is a perfect example and a perfect peek behind the curtain of why having a talented. Defense attorney is extremely important when you’re dealing with serious crimes, especially multiple serious crimes. All right, Justin, I want to come back to you because we were talking about generally theft offenses. And, guys, I think that was a great mental gymnastics.
00:17:55:03 – 00:18:13:26
Unknown
On the crime of burglary. And I hope you guys got a lot out of that, because burglary is an interesting crime, and it’s one that I think not a lot of people fully understand because they hear my house got burglarized or burgled, as they say, which is not a word, but, you know, and they think, oh, that means you got, you know, you got robbed, but that, that actually is another crime.
00:18:13:26 – 00:18:33:26
Unknown
And we’ll go over that today, too. That’s actually more of a theft based crime. But let’s talk about theft. Let’s go back to theft here. So I know from seeing a lot of theft cases, prosecution and defense that if you commit the crime of theft, you actually could commit other theft crimes within the same action. Right?
00:18:33:29 – 00:18:53:26
Unknown
Depending on how it unfolds, depending upon how it develops, depending upon what the facts are and what you did. So and this is where you can ultimately have a case sometimes where it gets consolidated, where you have multiple theft crimes that you’re being prosecuted for. And that’s again, as defense attorneys. How do we get to the brass tacks of saying, okay, this is what it really is.
00:18:53:26 – 00:19:16:00
Unknown
Let’s hone in on where we’re at. Let’s not kind of get prosecuted for five different things, okay, let’s get to one result. But I think it’s important to understand how the prosecution sometimes lays these out when we’re thinking about how we get to that point later. So I’m going to pop to you to kind of explain that, because, again, it was about a year ago that you were in the district attorney’s office and prosecuting crimes like this.
00:19:16:00 – 00:19:40:23
Unknown
So I know you’re very kind of closely aware of this, and I’d like to hear your take on that. So just generally when you think of like consolidation of crimes or charges etc., one you can have multiple, like you said, thefts in a, in a single event. But generally I think when I think of consolidation of cases that somebody has multiple dockets that are kind of intertwined factually.
00:19:40:25 – 00:20:09:29
Unknown
There’s some other nuances to that, but they can combine them into essentially one, one big action and try multiple cases at the same time. Specifically to theft offenses under section 3902 of the crimes Code. It talks about consolidation of theft offenses. And just in the most basic terms, essentially any conduct, denominated or considered theft in chapter 39 constitutes a single offense.
00:20:10:01 – 00:20:35:15
Unknown
So basically, if there’s an accusation of theft, and you’re charged, say, under theft by and lawful taking, but it comes out through the investigation and as things progress that it’s, you know, that by deception or some other type of theft, the Commonwealth can proceed under that theory or that different type of theft, if you will, in the same action, as long as there’s no unfair surprise in the defendant gets a fair trial.
00:20:35:15 – 00:20:57:00
Unknown
So, if initially it’s charge again as a theft bond, lawful taking, and then we find out that, you know, it was theft by deception or something, as long as essentially the defensive is made aware of that prior to trial. It honestly can even be during trial as long as, again, there’s no unfair prejudice or surprise. Then they can proceed under that, that theory.
00:20:57:02 – 00:21:26:18
Unknown
So like an example, what I just said, again, charged with theft by and lawful taking under 3921 during investigation and trial. You know, the evidence establishes that the defendant obtained the property through deception, which falls under 3922 under the consolidation of theft offenses. 3902 the Commonwealth may be able to establish the theft accusation through that alternative theory, even though the original charging document identified a different method of theft.
00:21:26:19 – 00:21:53:17
Unknown
Right. And you could in that scenario, you could be prosecuted for the crime of theft by unlawful taking and theft by deception, which are two different crimes. Correct? And in some scenarios, theft by deception actually bleeds into theft of lost or mislaid property. Yes. That’s when we see sometimes I would say infrequently, but sometimes. Yeah. And guys, an example of theft of lost or mislaid property would be and I’ve actually defended this a few times.
00:21:53:19 – 00:22:12:14
Unknown
You know, you, you go sit down at the bar and there is a wallet sitting on the bar, and you look around and there’s no one there. Someone clearly left their wallet there, and you just casually grab the wallet and put it in your pocket, finish your drink and leave. I’ve seen this at casinos where people find vouchers and they take them and they cash them in.
00:22:12:15 – 00:22:30:17
Unknown
Theft of lost property. I actually just had one of those last month. They defended, I’ve seen this in a lot of different ways. I mean, you could technically, this is crazy because we’ve all done this, but, I mean, I remember when I was in law school, I was out for a jog one day. I was jogging through kind of a a creepy area.
00:22:30:19 – 00:22:49:03
Unknown
And there was a $100 bill, like, sitting on the ground, like, in front of someone’s, like, stoop. And I like ram by it. I saw it, so, Bill, I looked around. There’s no one around. It was kind of like dusk. And I ran back and picked it up and took off, and I was like, sweet, I just found 100 bucks.
00:22:49:03 – 00:23:07:13
Unknown
You know, we’ve all found a dollar a quarter. Whatever. Technically, in some scenarios, that’s somebody’s lost property. And potentially, you know, if put together properly, I could be prosecuted for theft of lost property. There. Now, luckily that wasn’t in this state. I’m not going to say what state it was because, and the statute of limitations, of course is passed on that.
00:23:07:13 – 00:23:23:03
Unknown
But but that said, I mean, this is just an example of how, you know, if you find someone else’s property, the right thing to do morally is to return it if you can, and especially if it’s a wallet and you got the guy’s license in there and you know their address and you can get or you turn it into the bar and not to steal it.
00:23:23:03 – 00:23:43:07
Unknown
But if you do steal it and you’re in an establishment or somewhere where there’s a camera, a lot of times you’re going to get caught, and, you know, called to task for that. I have also had I had a situation recently where this was at Walmart. This is an interesting one. Theft of lost property. We ended up getting the charge dismissed after we paid restitution.
00:23:43:13 – 00:24:02:23
Unknown
But the lady was charged with theft of lost property for she went to check out at a self-checkout at Walmart and somebody had left, like a $20 bill. They’re like, right at the register, the self-checkout. I don’t know if they had gotten it a change or they just left it or whatever. And she saw it and was like, sweet, my lucky day.
00:24:02:23 – 00:24:23:14
Unknown
And she grabbed it and took it. Now, guys, we know Walmart and we’re going to talk about this great cameras. You know, her face is literally on camera. She uses her card to pay. They’ve got her identity. She got prosecuted for theft of lost property. And again, like I said, we ultimately negotiated. And I think everybody saw that this wasn’t the worst thing in the world and ultimately agreed to dismiss it.
00:24:23:14 – 00:24:39:19
Unknown
And she paid the $20 back to the person who was actually at the register right before her and left it there. Who actually had called in to report if anybody had turned it in. That’s how it they figured it out. But yeah, these types of things happen pretty regularly with that theft of lost property stuff. So keep an eye out for that and just be a good person out there.
00:24:39:20 – 00:24:56:14
Unknown
The statute requires you to be a good person to I mean, as one of the elements, it’s you fail to take reasonable steps to return the property. So like if you find money on the ground, there may not be any reasonable steps you can take to return that property because nobody’s around and it’s you don’t know how long it’s been there.
00:24:56:14 – 00:25:24:14
Unknown
But you’re right when you’re talking about, items where like, if you see somebody drop a $20 bill and then you just, you wait for them to leave and you take the $20 bill, you’ve failed to make the reasonable attempt to return that property. And you obviously were committing a theft. You obviously capitalized on that. And the same thing with like, phones and wallets, there’s plenty you can do to take a reasonable step to return it, even if it is just returning the item to customer service or something like that.
00:25:24:15 – 00:25:52:08
Unknown
So that’s what the statute requires. Yeah. Right. All right. Well I guess the moral of that Tim, is just be a decent human being. Right. Yeah. But if you find $100 on the ground and there’s no one around and you didn’t watch anybody drop it, it’s your lucky day. Well, it’s funny that you say this because I just saw there was a judge that was dealing with a fact pattern where somebody did this and took all of the money out of a person’s wallet and then, like, kind of gave the wallet back.
00:25:52:13 – 00:26:10:00
Unknown
Oh, so which is kind of like half nice because then you don’t have to get your new credit cards. Yeah, but it’s still and the judge was very upset about this fact pattern because because especially in this day and age, I mean, like a lot of people, us included, like it’s harder, the cost of living has gotten harder.
00:26:10:00 – 00:26:29:06
Unknown
So, you know, there is definitely, I think, a growing sense among judges and prosecutors where like, if you’re the kind of person that’s capitalizing on other people this way, I mean, that’s $20 they could have used to fill up their gas tank. And if you don’t, you don’t care about what you’re doing to that person. That starts to make some people pretty angry.
00:26:29:06 – 00:26:49:13
Unknown
And I saw the judge get very aggressive with the defendant on that, and to the point where, like, it was uncomfortable, I mean, being in the courtroom, I will say, if somebody ever found my wallet and took the money, I’d much rather get all my cards back and not my money than not get anything back, because most times people take the money and throw it and dumpster, right?
00:26:49:13 – 00:27:11:17
Unknown
Right. And then you have to get all your new cards, you have to get a new ID, you have to go through that whole process. Sometimes they use the cards, which is its own crime access device fraud. We’re going to talk about that. But yeah, I mean, ideally the right thing to do is return it with the money and maybe, just maybe, you’ll be rewarded if you do that and the person will give you $20 or whatever to say thank you.
00:27:11:23 – 00:27:31:25
Unknown
I mean, that’s probably what I would do if someone return my wallet to me with all my cash in it. So, anyway, Justin, when I go back to you here, theft is one of the only crimes in the code that has its own statute that talks about how it’s supposed to be graded. Right? Misdemeanors, summaries. Felonies.
00:27:31:27 – 00:28:01:19
Unknown
And this statute, 3903, specifically breaks down, what great Asian a crime should be or a theft crime. And I think it’s really focused on value. Right. It’s a value based statute, and that’s how the gradation works. But interestingly enough, there are caveats to this, right? There’s a number of crimes where retail theft included, where, you know, if it’s a multi offense or whether it’s a theft of a certain type of property that can, in its of its own right, enhance the gradation of the crime.
00:28:01:26 – 00:28:21:00
Unknown
So I’d like you to kind of unpack that for our viewers so that people have a sense of how these crimes get graded, even out of the gate. First offense is second offenses and how that looks. Yep. So retail theft kind of has its it also has its own grading level based on value, which is a little bit different than the other theft offenses.
00:28:21:01 – 00:28:56:20
Unknown
So just excluding retail theft, generally thefts of less than $50 are a misdemeanor. Of the third degree, $50 to less than 200 would be a misdemeanor. The second degree $200, or essentially up to 1999, is generally a misdemeanor one if it’s more than 2000, up to essentially 999. Was it 99,999? Yeah, it’s going to be a felony. Three 100,000 to less than 500,000 is a felony.
00:28:56:21 – 00:29:18:21
Unknown
To 500,000 or more is a felony. One there are, like you said, some some caveats to that. So if, there’s a theft of a firearm, which includes receiving stolen property, that’s a felony of the second degree. I want to pause on that one because theft of a firearm or more, what I see a lot is receiving stolen property of a firearm.
00:29:18:22 – 00:29:36:00
Unknown
Yes. It’s important people understand what receiving stolen property is because this is a little bit confusing in layman’s terms, I think, but I don’t think it’s very confusing at all. But we talk about it in the law all the time. I just it’s one of those crimes where it’s like, what does that actually mean? Right. And and how is that defined?
00:29:36:01 – 00:30:05:05
Unknown
Can you, can you maybe explain that a little bit better? Yes. So for receiving stolen property, essentially someone receives property that they know or believe it’s stolen. And later on here in the outline, I do have some, some things here. But essentially it’s even if they weren’t involved in the original theft. Correct. Right. Like someone else could have stole it and been like, oh, and I went and I bought this out of someone’s truck at a Walmart parking lot, you know, or something like that.
00:30:05:06 – 00:30:33:09
Unknown
Yeah. You know, like what they used to do, used to buy, like speakers or CDs or like as a, as a teenager, someone’s trunk. Yeah. But essentially, yeah, a person could be charged with receiving stolen property even if they were not involved in the original theft. And essentially what the Commonwealth has to establish is that the person intentionally received, retained or disposed of movable property of another, knowing that it had probably been stolen, or believing that it had probably been stolen.
00:30:33:12 – 00:31:01:09
Unknown
So, you know, buying a stolen vehicle, purchasing stolen electronics, selling property that someone else stole, or possessing property with under suspicious circumstances surrounding its acquisition or origin. Right. And I think this really gets down to common sense, right? You know, when you’re buying something or from someone that’s a little shady, right? Like the example I gave of meet a guy in a parking lot by some speakers out of his trunk, as you probably should have known that those were stolen.
00:31:01:09 – 00:31:22:13
Unknown
And I think the court’s going to hold you to that standard. Yeah. One of the things that I always think of in this, and this is kind of a just from personal experience. So growing up, I raced dirt bikes and motorcycles and. Yeah, I’ll say the price of a new like dirt bike at this point, like a decent one, is somewhere between 8 and 11,000 even more.
00:31:22:15 – 00:31:44:11
Unknown
They used to be a lot cheaper, obviously. But, you know, I would go racing all up and down the East Coast and constantly. And this is before really social media was, you know, a thing, people’s trailers would get broken into, like, especially down near like Philly in certain places in Jersey, people would stop for gas, go inside the gas station, they come out and, you know, for bikes would be gone from their trailer.
00:31:44:13 – 00:32:03:15
Unknown
So if you’re seeing, you know, a brand new 2027 dirt bike on Facebook Marketplace for like two grand, it’s probably stolen when the deal is too good to be true. It’s a red flag, and the law will come down on you for that. Like you can’t be blind to that. You can’t be like, oh, I don’t. I mean, I didn’t know it was just it was a good deal.
00:32:03:17 – 00:32:28:17
Unknown
This gets messy though, because when you’re dealing with people who’ve bought things under non suspicious circumstances. So like if you have a shady dealer it’s a defense. It’s a defense to somebody to receiving stolen property. Say you know here’s why I didn’t know it was stolen. Well the example I was going to use is if you have like a shady dealer, for example, a car dealer, and let’s say that they have a vehicle that is stolen and they’ve tried to like wash the title or whatever they’re doing with it, and they sell the vehicle to you.
00:32:28:18 – 00:32:53:06
Unknown
You, as the buyer may not realize that the dealership has duped you. So the dealer is going to be the one that’s going to be on the hook for that. But the problem is, this can screw you over as it relates to like a claim of ownership of that item. Because if that item was stolen from somebody, that person is technically the owner of the item, which means you are probably going to be entitled to restitution for the amount that you paid for the item.
00:32:53:07 – 00:33:19:21
Unknown
Yeah, but you know, this is where you get into other areas of law, like the Uniform Commercial Code and stuff, because it deals with it deals with this idea. I think in the UCC, it’s like the trickster, basically someone who is selling you something that they don’t have a claim of title to. And so like you, you in that point may not be facing criminal consequences, but you’re probably going to be in it for a civil claim at that point, because there’s going to be a dispute about who gets this property.
00:33:19:23 – 00:33:45:12
Unknown
Now, you you bought it legally, and maybe they even made a title or something out to you. But that title may not be it may not be valid. So if you buy something from somebody and they didn’t have the right to sell it to you, that makes you a victim and you could potentially be dealing with that. And I think under those circumstances, Tim, it’s probably fair for the person buying the vehicle to assume that it was not stolen.
00:33:45:12 – 00:34:09:13
Unknown
And that’s probably why they would not be prosecuted. Most people were in that scenario, right? Yeah. But this is also why, especially as it relates to vehicles, there are a lot of people out there that do sell vehicles in a very shady way, even some very underhanded dealerships that do it. So I would just caution our viewers that prosecuted very heavily under, you know, by PSP, state police and other entities out there.
00:34:09:15 – 00:34:35:09
Unknown
And those very often are like top of the line felony one kind of charges where there we’ve had a number of those actually in York County. Prosecuted. There’s, there’s actually a unit within PSP that focuses in this type of crime specifically and in bringing down. And those are those are cases that like, as prosecutors, we nobody wanted anything to do with them because you get you get a charging document that’s like 100 counts of, of title washing.
00:34:35:09 – 00:34:51:25
Unknown
And you’ve got like 80 victims and they’re all claiming restitution. And you usually have a dealer that is going to be then they’re going to be stripped of their business. They’re like, they’re not going to they’re gonna have to close the doors. They’re not going to be able to operate a business like that in the future, when they’re probably going to jail, they’re going they may go to jail.
00:34:51:25 – 00:35:09:07
Unknown
And then often there’s there’s hundreds of thousands of dollars in restitution. And a lot of times it’s a nightmare from the prosecution and the defense side, because these people want to quibble about what is the restitution, you know, what was the value of the car that they sold? What should they have to pay the person who bought the car, all that kind of stuff.
00:35:09:12 – 00:35:36:17
Unknown
Those cases get messy very quickly. Yeah. So, I mean, the public service announcement on that front, guys, is when you’re buying a vehicle, be very careful where you’re going to buy that vehicle. Maybe, you know, and I understand different means allows you to go to different places to buy views, but maybe be a little more doing your homework as it relates to who you’re buying that vehicle from, even if it is a dealership.
00:35:36:19 – 00:35:53:08
Unknown
Go on to the corner store that sells, you know, five cars on their lot might not be the best place to go. Always beware too, because I mean, and if you’re buying a car like on Craigslist, I bought a couple of cars off of Craigslist. You just from one user. Exactly. And that’s fine. Like I’ve sold vehicles on Craigslist private transfers.
00:35:53:08 – 00:36:11:11
Unknown
But in Pennsylvania it is not legal for you to just do a handshake deal with a with a vehicle. No. So, I mean, if anyone’s trying to tell you. Hey, I’ll tell you this car and then, you know, like, you do your thing with it or whatever. That is not legal to begin with. You’re you have to do a title transfer through a notary.
00:36:11:18 – 00:36:36:07
Unknown
So like, you got to be aware of that too, because that’s what the law requires and that protects you. Because if the notary can’t title the vehicle, well, then, you know, I’m not going to go through with this sale because this person either doesn’t have title or they don’t have the lawful right to transfer me the vehicle. That’s kind of a protection for people who are buying vehicles more than anything, but don’t go along with somebody who’s like, I’m not like, I don’t I’m I’m not going to do a title transfer.
00:36:36:11 – 00:36:51:25
Unknown
You just pay cash and you can take the car. Don’t do that. You can’t do that. That’s all. Yeah, you can’t do that. Plus, you’re actually walking away without a title. Then underhanded yourself, right? I actually just went through this last week. I bought one of my parents vehicles from them. And, you know, they gave it to me at a pretty reasonable price.
00:36:52:02 – 00:37:10:12
Unknown
And it was actually interesting because we did go to a notary. We went to triple A and we, you know, did the whole handshake deal, but we also did it on paper with a notary and sent all the documents to PennDOT, right, to make sure the title got transferred and everything. But the one thing that I thought was kind of interesting is, again, my, my it was my parents.
00:37:10:12 – 00:37:37:29
Unknown
So, I mean, they gave me a decent deal when I saw to pay them, but it was something that I probably they sold it to someone, not their son would have sold it for maybe a little more. And we had to disclose the price of sale to like, PennDOT. Right. And then if ultimately what I found out is if PennDOT or whoever later finds out or determines that the vehicle is worth more, significantly more than it was actually sold for, I could get taxed for the stuff I should have paid that happened to us.
00:37:38:00 – 00:38:11:23
Unknown
Yeah, which is crazy. I got a vehicle that was essentially gifted to us, and so when we claimed the price, it’s actually the use tax. So it’s the Department of Revenue actually came after us. And so they assessed tax and it’s really crappy that they do this Pennsylvania I think, I mean, this is I don’t have high thoughts about the way they did this because they assessed the tax based on the value of the vehicle at the present time, not based on the value that it would have been worth at the time we paid for it, and not based on the amount that we did pay for it.
00:38:11:23 – 00:38:35:25
Unknown
So they so Pennsylvania stole money from us, quite frankly. I mean, they that they taxed us beyond what we should have been taxed. But you’re right. And they do it with certain makes like models and years. So like if the vehicle is a newer vehicle and you claim something that’s below the the market value, it triggers a review and there is a process you can go through to try to tell them, like, hey, this is what I paid for it.
00:38:35:25 – 00:38:52:17
Unknown
I’m not lying about this. We tried doing that and then we still ended up getting taxed. So I mean, it was it was a pain. It was a hassle. We had the person that we that sold us the vehicle write a letter about the transaction to, to corroborate what we were saying. And they still didn’t they didn’t buy it.
00:38:52:17 – 00:39:13:18
Unknown
So, yeah, you get screwed from Pennsylvania. I think all of our viewers can probably get on board with us on we hate taxes. Yeah, and we hate we hate the underhanded taxes especially that are just line of pointless. They’re literally money grabs. They’re just reaching right into your pocket. Yep. So. All right. By the way, you said, do you still use Craigslist?
00:39:13:20 – 00:39:33:05
Unknown
I have, yeah, I have recently I sold my motorcycle on Craigslist recently. Oh, yeah. That one you just sold. You sold it on Craigslist? Yeah. Wow. Yeah, I don’t think anybody used that. We did a we did a title transfer for that too, but yeah, I sold it on Craigslist. You know, everybody that I’ve ever met, like, in done any kind of, like, transaction on Craigslist, they’ve all been super reasonable.
00:39:33:05 – 00:39:48:00
Unknown
I’ve also bought cars from dealers off of Craigslist because dealers will post on Craigslist. The last time I used Craigslist was when I told you guys in the prior podcast, when I, like, sold out like a Tomtom. Yeah, I was like a teenager. I’ve sold a pickup truck on Craigslist. I’ve sold two motorcycles on Craigslist. I’ve sold other stuff on Craigslist.
00:39:48:06 – 00:40:02:26
Unknown
My dad used to sell a ton of stuff on there, and I think like the they used to have a magazine called like AutoTrader. Yeah. Oh yeah, like rudders. You can pick it up at the store or even classified ads in like the merchandise and stuff. Same deal. I used to pick those up when I was young just to look at the cars and.
00:40:03:00 – 00:40:17:15
Unknown
Yeah. Oh, that’s a good deal. That’s a good you know, you listed in there my dad, they were free. Yeah. My dad I mean he I think I’ve talked about it before. He was a mechanic for 40 years and had like a dealer’s license. So he’d go to auctions and, you know, buy a car that, maybe just needed a little bit of work.
00:40:17:18 – 00:40:33:19
Unknown
But he would always buy ones that were totaled because then you can get a reconstructed title for them. Every car I’ve ever owned is a reconstructed title. Every single one. And he would just get, you know, a parts car, fix him up, and then, you know, sell them for a little bit more than what he put into him.
00:40:33:21 – 00:40:51:01
Unknown
And he would do a lot of deals on Craigslist. I know, going back again when I said I raced motorcycles when I grew out of a bike, we sold them on Craigslist all the time. Because again, this was all kind of before Facebook Marketplace and social media. You kind of had, I think phrase was had a website, at that time.
00:40:51:01 – 00:41:09:25
Unknown
But, you know, they still had like the paper ads and all that kind of stuff. And for the most part, yeah, we never had any issues. I think one thing to put in there for people that are doing that, I know I’ve seen stuff on social media like if you’re going to go sell something and meet somebody you don’t know, like don’t have them come to your house, right?
00:41:09:27 – 00:41:25:09
Unknown
You’re just kind of like inviting again, same thing with the motorcycles. People show up, they go, let me take it for a test ride and just disappear on it. Yeah. Also, they know where you live, so if you have other, you know, vehicles or things of value there, that could be, you know, kind of case in the place.
00:41:25:12 – 00:41:39:08
Unknown
I would always say try to meet like either a very public parking lot, like a Rutter’s gas station. Police. You can go to your local police station. Yeah, I was just gonna bring that up. Do you remember? Like, I don’t know, police stations still do this. And maybe we should ask some of our officer friends. Safe exchange.
00:41:39:11 – 00:41:55:27
Unknown
They have, like, a spot in their parking lot. It’s like a there’s a sign. Yeah, they still do that? Yeah, there’s a few departments that still have that. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I, I, I’m same deal with him. I mean whenever I’ve sold anything we’ve always met in like a neutral location and stuff like that. And it’s usually usually pretty chill.
00:41:56:00 – 00:42:13:27
Unknown
But yeah, you have to be on guard because you have to have something resembling a, like, a common sense radar in order. And it keeps you out of this receiving stolen property thing and that and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. Something resembling a sense of, is this a sketchy deal or is this person playing games? Yeah.
00:42:13:29 – 00:42:30:08
Unknown
And even on this, all this internet sale, Craigslist, Facebook marketplace, it’s very easy for the police to go and, like, get the records from the stuff because it’s all in line, like, so they can go back and see what the ad was. They can they can subpoena that stuff and they can get the records. Well, I’ve seen multiple advertisers.
00:42:30:08 – 00:42:49:03
Unknown
I’ve seen multiple cases where someone has had something stolen from them, which was then listed on Facebook Marketplace, and they found the listing. Yeah. In fact, in fact, I mean, I have a case right now where, that was central, the fact that the owner of the thing found the listing and then referred it to police, and so they found the thief.
00:42:49:05 – 00:43:11:03
Unknown
Yeah, exactly. I’ve had several cases, like. Interesting. Yeah. Okay, so speaking of all these motor vehicles, we were talking earlier about gradation. We didn’t completely finish that. But, the other thing to point out is if you are prosecuted specifically for theft of a motor vehicle, that is a felony in the third degree, regardless of the value. So the car could be could not even have wheels.
00:43:11:05 – 00:43:32:27
Unknown
Right. But it could be a motor vehicle, and that’s a felony in the third degree. This also includes things like motorized scooters potentially. It also includes things like electric bicycles. These would be vehicles right. Vehicles. Yeah I had a case. The item was a forklift. That’s that’s a that’s a felony. That’s a felony theft. I that was one of the cases you had in the very beginning when you started here.
00:43:32:27 – 00:43:54:08
Unknown
Right I remember that. How did that resolve you. Yeah it resolved okay. But yeah I mean, it doesn’t have to just be a car to your point. I mean, it’s anything that would qualify. It’s a vehicle. Yeah, a motor motor vehicle. Vehicle. Okay. So can I say something to you about about grading and consolidation? There is an interaction between those two concepts in the law.
00:43:54:11 – 00:44:17:03
Unknown
If you went into a retail store, for example, and you still $600 worth of stuff, and then you immediately went to the store next door and saw another $600 worth of stuff. The consolidation statute allows them to treat that as a single count of theft, because it’s it’s an ongoing criminal episode. And that means that instead of being charged with like a misdemeanor one retail theft, they’re going to aggregate those two.
00:44:17:06 – 00:44:32:02
Unknown
It’s 600 plus 600 that you’re up over a thousand. Now it becomes a felony retail theft. Even though it’s two. They could do it either way. They could charge it as two counts of retail theft or one single count of retail theft. And we see this a lot with people who steal from the same location over a period of days.
00:44:32:05 – 00:45:00:19
Unknown
Right? Those instead of charging four, five, six counts of retail theft, they’ll charge a single count and they’ll and they’ll aggregate all of the stuff that you stole into a single count. The statute allows them to do that. Yeah. And with consolidation, the so it’s kind of a shield for the Commonwealth in the sense that it protects the Commonwealth from losing a theft case because they charge you with a theft, and then your defense would be, well, I didn’t actually steal it by false impression.
00:45:00:24 – 00:45:24:03
Unknown
And so you failed to meet the elements. Therefore you have to equip me. So like you, you couldn’t be charged with theft by deception and then come in and say, no, I just straight up took it. So you have to find me not guilty. So it it eliminates. And the case law is pretty clear that that’s why consolidation exists, because you do not get the benefit of being able to come in and say, no, I didn’t commit a theft the way that you said I committed a theft.
00:45:24:06 – 00:45:46:09
Unknown
If you committed a theft, it’s going to count. And the Commonwealth is very they’re given a very liberal ability to amend the statutes before trial, even to bring the correct offenses. But it’s also a sword in the sense that, like I said, they can aggregate offenses together and that can enhance the grading. Yeah. And if if you want me to hit on the the retail theft, like I said, it’s a little bit different.
00:45:46:12 – 00:46:08:21
Unknown
Yeah. Let’s, let’s talk about the retail theft a little bit. Because I think this is a retail theft is like a big part of this episode. Right. Like and it’s a big part of what we defend. We defend a ton of retail thefts here. And I mean, you got places like, you know, you’re, you know, every place you got Walmarts West Manchester Township spring and Spray Township everywhere.
00:46:08:21 – 00:46:28:01
Unknown
You got target. Same. Yeah. Kohl’s, you know, all these establishments, even the gas station places, you know, they get that, get these, retail thefts, people stealing gas. Yeah. At gas stations. You know, that’s another one. So is that still happen that often? I actually have a case right now. Really? That’s how they do that. So trucker I I’ll explain it.
00:46:28:04 – 00:46:50:01
Unknown
I know it used to be different because used to be able to like they were gas stations where you’d actually pump the gas first and then you’d be able to go in and pay. Yeah. But I, I haven’t seen one of those in quite a while. So. Yeah. And that that’s actually a great point because you’re right there used to, used to be that like the gas pump was on and it was kind of like the honor system, like you would go in and pay after cash.
00:46:50:02 – 00:47:15:05
Unknown
Yeah. But now with the advent of cards, most people go up to their car. They as soon as your car is information, then you’re getting billed in real time. But in this scenario, this this is an odd one, which is actually why we probably don’t see it a lot. I’m going to give the basic facts of it. I’m not going to say any names because it’s an active case, but, essentially it involves a, a truck driver who kind of works on credit with the gas station.
00:47:15:06 – 00:47:37:08
Unknown
Okay. I’ve covered that before. Yeah. So he has like or he apparently had this, like, arrangement with this gas station that he could come in and fill up, and then he’d do his run. And when he got paid, he’d pay him for the gas. Okay, okay. So but he had the arraigned. The problem with the case is he had the arrangement with not like the owner of the gas station.
00:47:37:08 – 00:47:56:12
Unknown
It was with like his buddy who was like a manager there or something. So they would just, like, flick it on for him. He’d fill up. And then the idea was he would come pay. He didn’t pay. Yeah. And then the, the owner gets wise to like, why do we have all these like, you know, discrepancies here. And they look back and they see it’s this trucker every time coming in here.
00:47:56:12 – 00:48:15:29
Unknown
And any ever follows through with this payment. So they actually ended up kind of bringing on the investigation into the manager to who was enabling it. So this that you are right. It doesn’t happen a lot because of that now. But yeah, it is its own crime. Actually that’d be theft of services I think. Well, it’s the theft of the gas and also the service.
00:48:16:00 – 00:48:35:29
Unknown
It was actually it’s charges retail theft, which I think is merchandise. I have to look at it, but I think isn’t there a crime for theft of fuel like specifically? I don’t think so. No, I don’t think so. But I thought there might have been at one point. But this case is charged as a retail theft. So there is I think it’s under felony two.
00:48:36:01 – 00:49:01:11
Unknown
I just mentioned this one Tim was in in the statute. It’s the theft of anhydrous ammonia, which is it’s a precursor precursor for methamphetamine, apparently. Oh, well, that’s obvious why they do that. But, specific for retail thefts in the grade and everything. So for a first of well, they also stack. So first offense, second offense really goes off of value.
00:49:01:13 – 00:49:28:11
Unknown
But then again, the second offense, if it’s under a for first offense under $150, it’s a summary a second offense under $150 it’s a misdemeanor two for a first or second offense and it’s $150 or more. It’s a misdemeanor one third or subsequent offense. Automatic Fenley three doesn’t matter if you steal a $2 soda from rudders or essentially, $100,000 worth of electronics from Best Buy, it’s a felony.
00:49:28:12 – 00:49:53:00
Unknown
Three merchandise that exceeds $1,000 first, second, third offense is going to be a felony. Three and then, merchandise that would be a firearm or motor vehicle is also a felony three for retail theft. So it is a little bit different than just the actual, we’ll say normal theft offenses like theft and lawful taking. That by deception etc..
00:49:53:01 – 00:50:17:13
Unknown
Yeah. So I did just look it up. There is actually a separate crime for theft of gasoline. It’s 39. It’s under 39, 29 a retail theft, but there’s like a penalty section under 39, 29 B 1.1 where additional penalties can be imposed based upon it being motor fuel. Okay. So that’s interesting little tip there now. All right.
00:50:17:15 – 00:50:43:09
Unknown
As it relates to, retail theft. The other thing with retail theft that I think is really important to understand, like doing like, driving under suspension, multiple offenses can stack. So you can find yourself undervalue in a felony retail theft for your first one. Yeah. But you can also find yourself in a summary offense like a ticket for your first one.
00:50:43:12 – 00:50:58:24
Unknown
But if you get a second and a third and things like that, not only do the gradation go up, but the penalties go up, right? And it’s almost like they’re looking at it from two different angles, right. Like how much is the value and then what number is it. Right. And they don’t look just in the state.
00:50:58:24 – 00:51:21:05
Unknown
They look outside of the state to when they look at aggregation. I just had a case yesterday. Retail Theft Girl had two prior retail theft offenses in Virginia. Originally they charged this as a summary of fence in Pennsylvania. But then they ran her fingerprints, which this is why the district court requires you to get fingerprinted before they will resolve your case.
00:51:21:07 – 00:51:41:17
Unknown
Every district court and that, at least in York County, will not give you a resolution. You can’t even go in there and plead guilty to it if you wanted to, until you get your fingerprints back because they’re running you to see if you have other retailers. Right. And it turns out she had the prior two. They then enhanced it from the original charge of a summary to a felony charge.
00:51:41:19 – 00:51:59:17
Unknown
Which we actually resolved very favorably with a dismissal. But that’s how it worked, right? We thought we were dealing with a summary, and I actually went to her afterwards. She didn’t tell me this, by the way. I said, why did you not tell me you had two other retail thefts in Virginia? When I asked you, do you have any other retail thefts or any crimes?
00:51:59:18 – 00:52:14:21
Unknown
Yeah. And she was like, oh, well, I thought it was out of state. It didn’t really matter. But I had to kind of have that conversation like, this is why you got to tell your lawyer everything. Yeah. And when we ask you, do you have any other crimes? We’re asking you everywhere because it will bite you in the.
00:52:14:21 – 00:52:32:14
Unknown
But if you do not tell us, and we are defending you in a way that we think is going to be successful, and then it turns out it’s we’re entirely wrong because it’s an entirely higher crime, maybe significantly so. Yeah, absolutely. So absolutely, make sure you’re honest with your lawyer. Attorney client privilege is very, very real and alive.
00:52:32:17 – 00:52:56:20
Unknown
It is not harmful for you to tell your lawyer what’s going on. I find myself frequently having these conversations with clients, and I try to assure them in the beginning, like, this is why you can tell me, you know, to try to get cut through that stuff. Yeah. So especially with the retail theft, because again, if it’s a summary, first offense, very likely if you get an attorney involved early, we can contact the officer.
00:52:56:21 – 00:53:18:05
Unknown
I just dealt with this recently. A couple of weeks ago. Young kid went into target, stole some stupid stuff. Like, literally, like, I think it was under $10. But then again, they he was identified, like the same day, we got involved early and basically, you know, have it worked out. It’s not fully resolved yet, but, it will be.
00:53:18:06 – 00:53:52:07
Unknown
Yeah. And that was because I was able to contact the officer. Talked to the loss prevention officer, having him do some stuff in the meantime, like a shoplifters course and some community service. And, you know, ultimately, it’s going to end up in the dismissal. Yeah. Again, another reason it’s important to know what you’re doing. Don’t just go plead guilty to these crimes because especially a theft or a retail theft, because especially when you’re a young kid, because the other thing with theft crimes, guys that you got to understand is if you get convicted of a theft crime, it is considered under the law something we call crime and falsely okay, this is a
00:53:52:07 – 00:54:16:00
Unknown
Latin term, but crime and falsely basically means it’s a crime of deception. So this triggers a lot of things that could potentially affect you in the future. One, when you go to apply for a job and they see that you have a theft crumb on your record, well guess what? You’re dishonest person now. And you know, between you and the other guy who doesn’t have a theft crime, who you think is getting the job, so it’s going to slam shut a ton of doors for you, fix it, and don’t just plead guilty to it.
00:54:16:00 – 00:54:34:01
Unknown
And there are ways, as Justin was just explaining to fix it, but the lawyer is going to know how to do that, and the lawyer is going to be able to talk to the police, to talk to the lost prevention officers, to talk to the prosecutors in the district attorney’s office, to get to those points where we can truly get these dismissed or fixed by earning it.
00:54:34:01 – 00:55:05:02
Unknown
And I’ve said this before on episodes, guys, the way a lot of times fix a criminal case is you learn and then you earn, you demonstrate that you’re willing to take steps to fix it and to learn from the offense and and your conduct to make yourself a better person. And then guess what? You earn the result of not being saddled with this theft crime for the rest of your life, that’s going to follow you around and keep you from getting the jobs that you’re going to get when you’re 19 years old or 20 years old, you know, and you have all these options in the future in college or.
00:55:05:07 – 00:55:27:17
Unknown
Well, yeah, school, medical school, really any type of secondary education. I know you say we call it criminology in the criminal world, but in those situations, I think there’s a question on most, if not all applications for that. Like, have you ever been convicted of a crime of moral turpitude? I love that word. But I remember, you know, applying to college and applying to law school, like, that’s, you know, character and fitness, right?
00:55:27:18 – 00:56:00:03
Unknown
Like, schools also don’t want people that are dishonest, or steal things or again, commit theft because, you know, higher education, they call it that for a reason. Yeah. And I’d even take it one step further. It’s not only to get into the school, but it’s also when you go get your professional license, like, for instance, all of us as lawyers, when we had to sit to take the bar exam and pass to actually get our law license, to even sit to take the bar exam, you have to go through character and fitness where you kind of get scrutinized to see if they’re even willing to let you potentially become a lawyer.
00:56:00:05 – 00:56:15:23
Unknown
Yeah. You have to beg them to take a test and they kind of review. Yeah. And then you still got to take the test and pass, you know? But yeah, there’s there’s lawyers out there that go all the way through law school and then can’t even sit to take the bar exam because they have crimes of moral turpitude or dishonesty on their record.
00:56:16:00 – 00:56:39:25
Unknown
The other thing I wanted to talk about with Crim and falsely is and this is going to get a little off topic, but if you were ever or not, ever, but within a certain time period of your conviction for a crime or a crime and falsely crime called as a witness in any sort of case to testify your prior conviction for a crime of dishonesty, crime, and falsely can be used against you to impeach your credibility.
00:56:39:27 – 00:57:01:05
Unknown
And that can really, in the eyes of any jury, I would imagine, make you look pretty not credible as it relates to your testimony. So there’s a lot of implications. And again, just to kind of bring it home here, if you find yourself in a situation where you are charged with any theft, crime, shoplifting, slash retail theft included, talk to us, talk to someone who knows what they’re doing in this realm, because these crimes are very, very, very fixable.
00:57:01:07 – 00:57:29:13
Unknown
And that can really, in the eyes of any jury, I would imagine, make you look pretty not credible as it relates to your testimony. So there’s a lot of implications. And again, just to kind of bring it home here, if you find yourself in a situation where you are charged with any theft, crime, shoplifting, slash retail theft included, talk to us, talk to someone who knows what they’re doing in this realm, because these crimes are very, very, very fixable.
00:57:29:15 – 00:57:46:08
Unknown
If you learn and you earn okay, if you do the work to fix it, and then you end up fixing the crime in court, not getting convicted and not saddling yourself with these issues. So please take it seriously. Even if you’re young person, talk to your parents, have them help you out. Whatever it takes. Don’t just accept it.
00:57:46:09 – 00:58:06:02
Unknown
I think some other things that are important with retail theft that obviously we all know this because we’ve seen a ton of it, but some people out there may not realize I’ve actually never had anyone bring this up as like a potential defense. But, one of the things that’s important is, so say you’re wherever you’re at target, the grocery store, whatever.
00:58:06:06 – 00:58:30:02
Unknown
And you either try to walk out of the store with whatever you have or you under ring, etc. as soon as you pass the points of sale or points of purchase, that is a retail theft. So a lot of times a loss prevention officer will stop someone like heading out the exit doors, but they’ve already passed all the points of of purchase and they say, hey, you know, we we we’re going to stop you.
00:58:30:03 – 00:58:48:21
Unknown
We think you may have taken some items or not paid for items. If you walk away at that point or stay whatever, once you pass those points of sale that is retail theft. So whether or not you actually leave with the merchandise, you’re essentially guilty of retail. Yeah. Well, and a perfect example of that is they walk up to you and confront you, right.
00:58:48:23 – 00:59:06:19
Unknown
You under rank some items, they walk up to you in front of you, hey, come back to Los office and you go back there and you’re like, hey, I’m sorry. And you just return all the items. Well, it’s not a defense. You still committed the crime of retail theft. And I do want to talk about under ringing because I would say that is I don’t know what you guys, but that is the majority of retail thefts that I see at this point.
00:59:06:21 – 00:59:23:00
Unknown
I don’t see a ton where people like, you know, crash and burn, like they go in there and they just grab items off the shelf and run out of the store. Like, I don’t really see that much anymore. I see a pretty good amount of that. You do. And I’ve and I’ve seen it. It’s more common, I think, outside of York, but it’s also pretty common to see people.
00:59:23:00 – 00:59:43:11
Unknown
They’ll just load up a shopping cart and push it out. That’s that’s pretty common. Yeah. I mean, that’s also pretty brazen, isn’t it? Like. Yeah. I mean, especially in today’s world, a camera, which is why it’s kind of hard for those people to get deals. I like the ringing ones, you know, everybody’s got an under ringing excuse that I’ve ever met with or always like, oh, I missed it.
00:59:43:12 – 01:00:01:17
Unknown
And then we look at the complaint, it’s like, well, you missed like 17 items, like how to or, you know, you look at the camera footage and it’s like you clearly had both of these items in your hand. You rung run up and put them both in the cart. Like, I think when you’re dealing with a retail theft, if you did it, it’s better, at least with your lawyer to be like, hey, I did.
01:00:01:18 – 01:00:27:07
Unknown
This is why I did this. And then we figure out how we can fix that, because a lot of times it’s a it’s a crime of like circumstance, right? Like it’s, you know, I am struggling with my finances. So this is why I did this or, you know, I couldn’t buy diapers for my kid that week, and this is why I did this and some of that stuff you can get a little sympathy for, when you’re in there kind of stealing, you know, tools and meat.
01:00:27:14 – 01:00:53:12
Unknown
I was going to say things like that. I’ve never. I’ve never seen someone who’s. I maybe one time seen somebody who’s stolen, like, an absolute necessity that’s like, that is, I think, a myth. I. Most of the thefts that I’ve handled as a prosecutor and as a defense attorney, it’s people that are just straight up stealing. Yeah. I mean, I mean, I, I have seen a number of things where people steal like other like little or items like, you know, they’ll still, you know, cosmetic items and things like that.
01:00:53:12 – 01:01:11:09
Unknown
But I don’t think you’re right, Tim. It’s not. When I think of when I think of a necessity, I think of like, you cannot live without this. I saw one case, I think, where there was a baby formula theft. But I mean, honestly, the vast majority of thefts that I’m seeing are like, it’s just as you said, it’s just kind of brazen theft.
01:01:11:09 – 01:01:30:05
Unknown
And I mean that that is what it is. And again, kind of gets back to what I was saying, like, if if you’re meeting with your attorney in a private conference room and you did commit the crime of retail theft, just tell them why you did it. It’s better for us to know that. So then we can kind of weave that into the circumstance and figure out how we’re going to fix that and then have the right conversation with the officer.
01:01:30:05 – 01:01:50:23
Unknown
Because if you go to the cop or you go to the Da and you’re like, hey, I didn’t know I did this. And then like I was just saying, they look at the report, they look at the video and it’s clear as day you knew that the hell you were doing, he was switching tags or you were. I mean, then you’re just not only did you commit crimes of theft, but now you’re also lying and you’re trying to dig yourself, like proving that you’re a liar.
01:01:50:24 – 01:02:06:27
Unknown
Yeah, yeah, that you’re a deceiver. Yeah. And you’re going to make your situation worse. Where, as you had said, Justin, there’s a lot of ways to fix these crimes, you know, not get convicted. I did have a guy one time try to use the defense saying that he was he was going out to the like, the vestibule area to try to purchase a drink or something.
01:02:07:00 – 01:02:22:17
Unknown
And it was in the middle of his transaction, pretty much. I mean, it was like and and the judge just was like, no, I’m not. I don’t buy that. You could have left your cart inside the store you like. There was no reason. First off there, I got I, I’m pretty sure I made the argument because I was familiar with the establishment.
01:02:22:20 – 01:02:51:18
Unknown
Like, there’s not even like we had a witness, I think from the store be like, there’s not even anything out there I wanted to buy. Did that guy have a, like, a private attorney representing it? Really? Yeah. Okay. Because, I mean, I feel like a lot of times like like private counsel, like we are a wall for our clients to kind of like, bounce ideas off of or thoughts or defenses that we can kind of use our years of experience in the courtroom to kind of say, hey, buddy, like, I get what you’re saying, but I promise you, that’s not going to work, right?
01:02:51:19 – 01:03:08:19
Unknown
Because most places don’t have a vending machine out like where the carts are anymore. Most places don’t have. There used to be some stores, I think that had like a claw game and some other stuff out there, but a lot of places don’t have anything out there anymore because I think there’s a lot of people that are pro se means they represent themselves, right?
01:03:08:19 – 01:03:26:08
Unknown
Or maybe they have a public defender who are they’re great lawyers, but they again, maybe aren’t communicating well or frequently with their lawyer. They’re not bouncing off things, they’re not strategizing as much. And they come up with these ideas and trial that are just completely unbelievable. But in their own mind, it like it’s there. It’s their best excuse.
01:03:26:09 – 01:03:53:03
Unknown
Right? Right. And that’s where an attorney comes in, like especially with these retail thefts, like use the filter of your lawyer to navigate how you defend your retail theft case and trust your lawyer because guys, you know, your lawyer, if there’s someone that’s been doing it for a while, they are a great filter or kind of that litmus test of what your excuse is going to be, because if it’s not going to work, not only are you going to make yourself look kind of foolish and funny in court, but you’re probably going to get taxed, you know?
01:03:53:05 – 01:04:08:08
Unknown
Yeah, when it comes time for a punishment because you got a judge. Now, we’re not only did you commit the crime of retail theft, but then you came in and you lied and you made up some BS excuse, and now they’re going to punish you even harder. And we have some judges in York who freaking hate retail theft, and they whack people for them.
01:04:08:12 – 01:04:26:20
Unknown
Well, like you just said, you know, if you’re not taking responsibility for it and you come in and just some, like, crazy, crazy story about why you did what you did, like you said, you’re going to get taxed for that because, again, the judge, the judge in sentencing can take that into consideration whether or not you accept responsibility to show remorse.
01:04:26:21 – 01:04:48:02
Unknown
Yeah. All of that type of stuff. So, I think when it comes to retail theft, that maybe where we get a lot of the, we’ll say most comical explanations, you know, what was going on? But, yeah, what I was going to say earlier. And this goes with the retail theft. And I know you’ve told a story about, like, a guy wearing a coach of stuff with meat or something like, oh, you got tased.
01:04:48:03 – 01:05:07:01
Unknown
Yeah, until I came to York and was in the DA’s office, and this was like, not long after I started there, maybe a couple of months, someone was telling me that there was like these 2 or 3 people that were going to like Weis and Giant and just stealing steaks, seafood, etc. and then they would just go park, like somewhere in the city and sell, like meat out the back of a box truck.
01:05:07:07 – 01:05:22:18
Unknown
I was like, I can’t believe that there’s such a market for like, underground meat. And apparently it’s like these people were making like tens of thousands of dollars, right? Selling, you know. Well, if you think about it. There is companies that you I mean, you all know them. There’s companies out there you can buy like bulk meat from.
01:05:22:19 – 01:05:42:24
Unknown
Oh, I’ve seen them like on the side of the road, like some guy in a pickup truck with coolers. Yeah, but they are. Some of those are legit 40 bucks. Yeah, some of those are legit. They’re actually like companies or they’ll, they’ll sell, you know, like half a cow, you know, you can like, or you can buy into a cow and you can go pick up your, your half a cow or something.
01:05:42:27 – 01:06:00:25
Unknown
And I’m sure some of you have done that, and you keep it in your deep freezer for eight years and you like, use half of it. But anyway, yeah, but this also kind of get your story gets a little bit into. And I want you to talk about this a little, organized retail. Yes. Right. Yeah. Cause you were talking about how multiple people were doing this, and they were kind of hitting a few stores.
01:06:01:01 – 01:06:21:18
Unknown
And at some point, retail theft becomes even more serious than it might already be if it’s organized. And what does that mean, exactly? Yeah. So I saw a ton of that also because the courtroom I was assigned to, you had spring. It’s very township where we just talked about, you know, Sam’s Club, Walmart, target. Dick’s Sporting Goods I saw a few times Best Buy.
01:06:21:20 – 01:06:52:18
Unknown
So basically, Pennsylvania has a separate crime of organized retail theft. Which essentially targets individuals who. Well, I’ll call them even organizations. Usually there’s between, I would say three to, you know, up to ten people. I had a retail theft case that had ten co-defendants. And basically it’s they organized coordinate control, supervised finance, manage, essentially an organized retail theft enterprise.
01:06:52:20 – 01:07:35:05
Unknown
The reason that I think Pennsylvania has this is that there really is a huge market out there for resale of stolen merchandise and coordinated theft operations, like there’s big money in that. One of the ones that I had in the DA’s office was, again, it was about ten individuals. They were going through Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, new Jersey, and they may have had 1 or 2 in Delaware, what they were going to call stores that had like the Sephora or whatever that makeup company is in there and stealing makeup, fragrances, etc. and basically what they do is just kind of like bum rush in there and with garbage bags or whatever and
01:07:35:05 – 01:07:58:15
Unknown
just fill them like, knock stuff off like you. It’s crazy. Seeing some of the videos, things that people, I think where they make their big mistakes is, you know, people have tattoos and identifying marks and whether or not you cover your face, they’re going to identify you one way or another. And these stores, especially those bigger stores, the loss prevention offices, they all talk to each other.
01:07:58:18 – 01:08:23:07
Unknown
Yeah. So when I got this case, it was a huge amount of, excuse me, huge amount of discovery. And the LPO, of one of the stores essentially kind of took lead of this investigation. And I’m not kidding. I got like 50 plus page packets on each individual and all of the stores, they hit all of the places or all the merchandise they took.
01:08:23:09 – 01:08:48:21
Unknown
And the grading of those start at a felony. Three so they go from organized retail theft. You’re straight out of the gate. You’re in a felony land. Yes. Like you, there’s no misdemeanor organized retail theft. Right. And a lot of times two the police are looking at these and they’re looking at the very similar MOS or modus operandi, which is the way the actual crime is committed, kind of like the habit of committing the crime.
01:08:48:21 – 01:09:06:13
Unknown
We do it this way every time, right? This is our trickery. This is the way we do it. And that’s how they get to how this is now organized. Right? So, yeah, I mean, you’re right, Justin, this can be huge. And, you know, we’ve I think we’ve already all defended and prosecuted these types of crimes. These people almost always are going to go to jail.
01:09:06:13 – 01:09:28:15
Unknown
And a lot of times they are going to try to infiltrate up the ring, because a lot of times it’s not even just the people in the store. There’s bigger organizations that are actually directing this sometimes in cruise type type of things, almost like it’s like the Mafia, right? Where you have a higher right. It really is. And they’re out there like directing crews to do these in different like geographical areas.
01:09:28:17 – 01:09:50:09
Unknown
Yeah, they’ll they’ll like case out different stores and figure out when, you know, like restocks are coming. I had two of the stores that were actually both here in New York County. They were redoing the two. Kohl’s. There was one in spring, and I think the other ones in West Manchester, they were like upgrading the stores. And, you know, I think they were adding like the that’s a four aspect to the store, which they didn’t used to have.
01:09:50:15 – 01:10:12:01
Unknown
And before it was like officially open, that’s when they went in and took everything. So they were still like stocking shelves. And they went in and took all of this. And then like I said, the the resale market for this is crazy. And that’s how they actually identified a couple of the people was they had tattoos, and different identifying marks where, they were essentially posting, you know, on Facebook.
01:10:12:02 – 01:10:32:20
Unknown
Does anyone recognize these, you know, like the police department’s Crime Watch, etc.. And then they found Facebook profiles for some of these people who were on Facebook Marketplace trying to resell a bunch of the items that were taken. And again, it’s just like the me thing, like they’re just knocking down, say they steal a bunch of Under Armor clothing, you know, the hoodies, sweatpants, whatever.
01:10:32:20 – 01:10:50:13
Unknown
Go for 50 bucks in the store. They’re selling them for 30, you know what I mean? And they didn’t pay anything for it, so they’re making a ton of cash. And like I said, for the grading, felony three is 2500 to just to under 10,000, felony two is 10,000 under $50,000. And then 50,000 or more is a felony.
01:10:50:14 – 01:11:09:03
Unknown
One. Yeah. And we’re not just talking about what you took. We’re talking about what the whole organization. Correct. So you can be on the hook for one two instances. But the organization did 50 and all that money’s aggregated into that number, which is why most of these become felony ones. And they usually stack them up that much to get to that point.
01:11:09:05 – 01:11:31:12
Unknown
Yes. I wanted to ask you guys on this retail theft thing, this organized retail theft thing. This isn’t really retail theft, but it’s organized in a way. And I’ve seen a bunch of this where we get usually it’s younger kids who have a bank account that are turned into, like, check cashing mules. Okay. And let me kind of set this up for you.
01:11:31:14 – 01:11:54:05
Unknown
I see a lot of this people coming up from Maryland, and they, may have like, a, like, again, they’re usually a young kid who has an uncompromised bank account. Probably not a lot of money in it, but it’s a legit bank account. And they will get, someone will get in touch with them and say, hey, I’m going to give you a check.
01:11:54:07 – 01:12:13:10
Unknown
I need you to kind of run that through your bank account and then take it out and say it’s we’ll use easy numbers. Let’s say it’s a check for $1,000. Take that out and I need you to give me 900, and you keep 100 for letting me kind of use your account. And what they say to you is, I don’t have a good bank account, or I don’t have an account on my own, so I just need somebody who has an account to check to cash this check.
01:12:13:14 – 01:12:48:24
Unknown
Well, it turns out the check is whitewashed or the chat and, you know, refilled out to them, type of thing. Have you guys seen that with, like, younger people much? Not the way that you’ve described it, but I mean, I have seen how have you seen it, Tim? I’ve seen just that. Like there there’s, maybe there’s some kind of underlying scam where it’s like they’re selling a puppy or, you know, something they’re claiming, and so they’ll get a victim to send a deposit or a check in the form of a deposit, and then that’ll go into someone’s account and it’ll be there for a little bit of time, and then they’ll immediately go
01:12:48:24 – 01:13:17:11
Unknown
in and they’ll send that money onward to someone else. And usually it’s done through like PayPal or something like that. I have also seen one case where, they, they would draw a check which was over drafted, and then they would immediately cash out all the money. And then by the time the bank realized that the check was void and didn’t clear, then they like they’ve already taken a percentage because there are some banks that allow you to draw against a check a certain percentage of the check before it clears.
01:13:17:13 – 01:13:36:05
Unknown
So usually it’s like a bad check that’s written. And then, when it’s deposited with the bank, they just immediately try to withdraw all the money out of it. And their account will either go negative or, or it’ll, it’ll be flagged as a fraudulent check. And then their account is negative at that point because the check doesn’t go through.
01:13:36:07 – 01:14:01:25
Unknown
And so they’ve just taken money out of the bank at that point. Yeah. And you’re right. I mean, that is another way that they’ll use younger kids, usually with bank accounts to move money, use checks, etc.. The the washing of checks, the ones I’ve seen pointedly are federal cases because and what what people will do is they will actually go to the blue boxes and they will hit them, meaning they will like open them, break them open.
01:14:01:25 – 01:14:19:00
Unknown
Usually sometimes they have an actual key, like a skeleton key. They can get into them and they will take all of the mail that is in that blue box. So again, if you’re dropping mail in a blue box. Be careful. And this is why the feds prosecute because it’s the United States Postal Service crime. And there are agents for the United States Postal Service that, investigate these.
01:14:19:06 – 01:14:36:19
Unknown
And they will go through every single one of these pieces of mail, discard most of them because there’s no checks in them. But the ones that there are checks, they actually have the ability to whitewash the check and refill it out. And they do this multiple different blue boxes, and they get a bunch of checks and they they usually get a decent amount of money from it.
01:14:36:26 – 01:15:01:09
Unknown
But again, federal crime guys, it’s going to be prosecuted federally and it usually is going to carry a jail sentence as a result because the federal system is slightly, well, not slightly, quite a bit more unforgiving than I would say the state system when it comes to that. Okay, I did want to go back to one thing that I think confuses some people, and that is the crime of unauthorized use of a vehicle.
01:15:01:12 – 01:15:23:15
Unknown
When I think of that crime, I don’t always think of theft per se, but it’s almost like temporary theft in a way, a ton of this. So do you want to adjust? Do you want to explain unauthorized use of a motor vehicle and how that differs from theft of a motor vehicle? Yeah. So I mean, unauthorized use of motor vehicles, exactly what it sounds like.
01:15:23:20 – 01:15:49:29
Unknown
Basically, you use a vehicle that does not belong to you and you don’t have consent to use it. So like you said, it is kind of like a temporary theft. And I’ve actually seen this not only in, you know, just like private cases, like your cousin comes to your house, takes your car without permission and, you know, drives off and, you know, you report your car stolen, and then they find it and you’re like, well, I never gave him the permission.
01:15:49:29 – 01:16:10:09
Unknown
That could be unauthorized use. I’ve also seen it where someone rents a vehicle and fails to return it, which could also be theft of leased property, potentially. I know for a fact for being in the DA’s office that crime is terrible. What is property? Yeah. Like, you know, when what was it, like, rent a center and all that stuff was big?
01:16:10:11 – 01:16:32:15
Unknown
Yeah. I was gonna say, actually, do you want to talk about that? Let’s finish on, unauthorized use. But that that theft of leased property crime is such a pain. I do want to unpack that a little bit, but for unauthorized use, like I said, it’s basically just you operate a vehicle without the owner’s consent, and that, again, it’s just like we talked about with theft of a motor vehicle, automobile, airplane, motorcycle, motor propelled vehicle belonging to another person.
01:16:32:18 – 01:16:55:15
Unknown
There is a statutory defense. If the defendant reasonably believed, the owner would have consented to the operation had the owner known about it. Most of the time we were pleading those, those, those charges down. But there were definitely some that, you know, it was pretty clear, like, one I can think of. A woman was dating this guy.
01:16:55:17 – 01:17:11:26
Unknown
They broke up, but we’re still living together. He didn’t have a car. She had two cars. And again, their relationship at that point wasn’t great. And she returned home from work one day in her, her car was gone, and she called him and was like, hey, do you have my car? And he’s like, yeah, I had to go, you know, to so-and-so’s house.
01:17:11:26 – 01:17:31:11
Unknown
And she reported it. And he was charged with unauthorized use. Right. A lot of times to mean that defense is going to fall flat if you’re not licensed because you don’t reasonably believe that someone’s going to consent to you using your vehicle if you don’t have a license. So suspended license or a suspended license, I would often treat this count as like a drop count for theft of leased property or theft of a motor vehicle or something.
01:17:31:11 – 01:17:49:02
Unknown
This would be like a fallback. It’d be it because it’s not a felony, it’s an M2. So a lot of times this was you can plead to this in exchange in instead of pleading to a felony. Yeah. I mean if it’s a vehicle, right. You know. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well let’s let’s go let’s just briefly go over theft of leased property since you brought it up.
01:17:49:02 – 01:18:11:24
Unknown
Justin. So, guys, theft of leased property. And I back now about 17 years back or so ago when I was a prosecutor, I actually used to seen this a good amount when I was a prosecutor. I see it never now, like, I don’t ever see this crime charge now, but how we used to see it. Charge.
01:18:11:24 – 01:18:31:27
Unknown
And I’ll explain that. First is, you know, people would go to, you know, rent a center or, you know, errands, Rent-A-Center or whatever. Those different where you rent, like a TV or a couch. It’s like, oh yeah, yeah, you like rent to own type of stuff. And by the way, they’re never good deals. So if you can avoid doing this, like stay out of those places.
01:18:31:27 – 01:18:50:08
Unknown
But, it’s a total rip off. But basically there’s these places that exist and a lot of times people, I’m going to go rent the big screen for the Super Bowl, right? Or I’m going to rent this or that, and then they just fail to return it and they sign a contract, and then they’re required to send the place is required to send a certified letter demanding the property back.
01:18:50:08 – 01:19:14:25
Unknown
And if you still fail to comply or to pay, they can then report that to the police. But I think the law, or at least the prosecution of this law, has gotten away from doing what the work of what is really the responsibility of the business because it’s civil. Yes. And that’s why I think police and prosecutors have kind of gone the way of just, no, we’re not going to prosecute that anymore.
01:19:14:26 – 01:19:27:19
Unknown
Like you need to sue that person. Or I used to tell me that’s the risk you take if you’re going to run a business like this. You know, when I would get calls about that in the DA’s office, I would. I don’t think I ever approved one. Yeah. Just because there’s such a pain. It really is a civil issue.
01:19:27:20 – 01:19:49:13
Unknown
Yeah. And from my recollection, I started in the A’s office in 20 beginning of 2023. And it was about that time that they I think the DA’s office as a whole and most of the police departments were moving away from charging that because so many were being lost at trial, because that’s what, as a defense attorney, you bring up like this is a civil issue.
01:19:49:14 – 01:20:08:02
Unknown
This isn’t criminal, right? And like I said, I think it’s just such a pain to prosecute those, those that type of charge. It just it’s almost like a waste of time. Yeah. There’s, you know, there’s fish to fry. And again, it’s it’s a civil issue. And if they want to go after these people for the money that they owe them.
01:20:08:05 – 01:20:27:03
Unknown
You know. Yeah. Go. I mean sue them. That’s why this, that’s why that exists. Yeah. All right. Tim, I’m gonna cover to you for theft of services. This is one that we see sometimes. And just to kind of set the stage for this. Services are what everybody thinks they are, right? It’s it’s somebody did something for you.
01:20:27:03 – 01:20:47:29
Unknown
It might not be an actual item, but you you would reasonably expect to pay this person compensation for whatever service they were providing to you. Sometimes there’s even a contract involved with this as well. But but, Tim, can you kind of unpack what theft of services is for me? Yeah. I mean, you pretty much did it already. It’s it’s like dining and dashing.
01:20:48:00 – 01:21:10:07
Unknown
That’s that’s a good one. Yeah, that’s that’s an example of it. I actually had an officer call me recently because we were talking through a fact pattern. And he, he was asking because the central question that you brought up at the very beginning is what is a theft? And in this case, there was a question. Can you can you be guilty of theft in Pennsylvania if it’s your property.
01:21:10:09 – 01:21:37:06
Unknown
The answer is no. But if you drop your car off for instance at like a mechanic shop and then you sneak into the shop after hours, after they’ve made the repairs and you drive your car away, you could you did commit a theft. You didn’t steal the car. You stole the service. So that’s what we’re talking about here is if there’s a service of any kind that’s performed for you, and you don’t, you don’t render payment, then you stole the service.
01:21:37:08 – 01:22:09:12
Unknown
If there’s supposed to be payment that’s made up front, and you either refuse to do that or you leave without paying it. It does, it does. It it creates a presumption that you that you did obtain the services by deception. So if it’s something that you would normally pay for either up front or immediately, like a hotel or like a, like a restaurant or something, then there’s a presumption against you that you did deceive and you acquired the services.
01:22:09:13 – 01:22:32:14
Unknown
Have either one of you guys seen the new Ali G movie just came out? Okay. There’s a scene in the beginning of that movie where Ali G thinks that HBO has hired him for like $3 million to, like, run a third season of his Ali G show. But it’s all based on the fact that he got a fax that is like 12 years old or something.
01:22:32:15 – 01:22:47:05
Unknown
Like he, like, hadn’t had his fax machine plugged in and he just plugged it in and it came through, but it was dated like 2004. So he he goes out and he gets his whole crew together and they celebrate and they go out to dinner and, he runs up a $12,000 bill, right. There’s like lobster on the table.
01:22:47:05 – 01:23:08:11
Unknown
There’s like drinks are flowing everybody’s party and celebrating the fact that he got hired. Right. And he’s getting this $3 million gig. And then he gets a call at the very end of dinner from HBO, and they’re like, Ali, like that offer expired. That was like 12 years ago or whatever. And, and you see, Ali gets up and he, he like kind of like slowly backs out and then he just takes off running.
01:23:08:12 – 01:23:26:05
Unknown
Like that’s the perfect example of theft to services like like clearly like, you know and actually property two because he ate the food, you know. So but yeah, well it’s like the Home Alone two example, right? Like Kevin. Kevin goes in and he books a hotel room using his dad’s credit card. So I mean, he he didn’t get permission from his dad to do that.
01:23:26:05 – 01:23:46:05
Unknown
So technically if his dad wanted to, you know, if his dad wanted to file a complaint, his dad has a theft access device. Yeah. And you brought it up. So that’s where we’re going next. Using a card without someone’s permission. Using a check without someone’s permission. Right. That those are instruments, their devices that we use to exchange money in society.
01:23:46:11 – 01:24:09:27
Unknown
So they are access devices, access to money through the device and access device. Fraud is a crime in Pennsylvania. That covers the essentially theft using those types of devices. Right. I mean, I love that you said that about the check, because and this is for all the officers out there. I saw this a lot in York. That there are some officers I don’t think that understand that.
01:24:09:27 – 01:24:32:15
Unknown
So, like, if somebody writes a check, let’s say they stole your checkbook and they write a check and they write themselves a check for, for, you know, $500 or whatever. A lot of officers that I saw will charge that as theft by unlawful taking, which you can do. That’s fine. But they neglect to charge the access device fraud which which in that case, I mean, I think if it’s $500 or more, it’s a felony.
01:24:32:18 – 01:24:53:25
Unknown
So in that case, I would I would tell officers all the time, this is an access device fraud primarily. It’s a theft secondarily, but it’s not the check. That’s the access device. The access device as defined in the statute is the account number and routing number, which is on the check because that’s the information that’s used to access the account.
01:24:53:27 – 01:25:16:25
Unknown
So it you don’t even have to use an A check. If you get money out of somebody’s account by inputting the routing number, an account number that’s access device. Flawed. Right. Because you’re using the access device, the account number routing number. Right. That’s the access device. So if somebody is writing a check from somebody else’s account, it is a theft, but it’s also an access device and the check has the numbers on it.
01:25:16:25 – 01:25:35:18
Unknown
Correct. Hence that’s how the money comes out of the numbers, hence the devices. Then that’s how the check works is because otherwise the check would just be a piece of paper that it’s monopoly money, it’s just got money written on it. But it’s the it’s the access device that’s printed on the check that allows them to transfer money out of it, which is printed on every single check.
01:25:35:25 – 01:25:52:09
Unknown
On every check. Okay. All right. Let’s move over to, maybe the last one for today. Well, just before you do that, I would often, as a prosecutor, plead a lot of these down. If they make restitution up front because possession of the access device is a is a misdemeanor. Three. Yes. So that was a tool for me in my belt.
01:25:52:09 – 01:26:10:27
Unknown
And it still is, even as a defense attorney for getting these resolved. At the preliminary hearing, you made me charged with a felony access device fraud. But we might be able to resolve that at the prelim. If we make restitution upfront, they may plead it down to misdemeanor three, which is possession of an access device. And then you can plead to it at the at the magistrate and you’re done.
01:26:10:29 – 01:26:30:00
Unknown
You may get out of it without probation, jail time, your costs are lower. All that, it’s got a fine. And you avoided a felony. Exactly. And a very low level misdemeanor. Exactly. Yeah. That’s a great, great arrow in the quiver. Yeah. For a defense attorney. But again, that usually comes with let’s make restitution. Let’s let’s learn. Let’s maybe do a program.
01:26:30:00 – 01:26:49:23
Unknown
Let’s do a course and let’s show that we’re making a mess. Right. You know. So okay, let’s talk about robbery. All right. So I’m sure all of you out there have heard someone say he robbed me. And that a lot of times, what they are meaning by that is he stole from me. So he committed theft against me, right.
01:26:50:00 – 01:27:13:24
Unknown
Somebody, you know, in the instance of burglary, right? They break into your house and they steal your the TV off your wall. They say I got robbed. Well, actually you didn’t. The way it’s defined, you got burglarized and you got theft committed against you. But you did not have robbery committed against you. You didn’t get robbed. In fact, I do cringe a little bit because I hear this so much.
01:27:13:24 – 01:27:33:14
Unknown
I even hear it in like, Hollywood movies, like I got robbed or she got robbed or something like that. And I was like, okay, well, I want to hear more about this because I don’t think this is actually robbery. And maybe that’s just my lawyer brain, like, cringing a little bit for all you lawyers out there. You might be with me on that, but, Justin, you want to tell us a little bit about what it is actually for robbery?
01:27:33:17 – 01:28:00:21
Unknown
Yeah. So basically, robbery isn’t just stealing someone’s property. It’s essentially committing a theft through the use of force or threat of force. So we have robbery involving series bodily injury. So if someone comes up to you on the street, stabs you, takes your wallet, that’s going to. Well, I guess depending on where they stab you, or we’ll say they shoot you serious bodily injury.
01:28:00:24 – 01:28:21:06
Unknown
And essentially committing during the course of committing a theft. Sorry. There’s robbery involving threats. So essentially, if someone comes up to you again on the street, threatens you with a knife, and intentionally puts you in fear of immediate series bodily injury, and this kind of goes to back to our self-defense thing. Like what’s immediate? Serious bodily injury.
01:28:21:07 – 01:28:38:03
Unknown
Right. But robbery involving threats, that’s like the finger in the pocket thing. Yeah, yeah. I mean, like, that’s that satisfies the felony, right? Yeah. You don’t even have to have a weapon. Yeah. It’s that more. What do you mean by that? Well, like like John Dillinger escape from prison by threatening people with a wooden. Oh, you’re talking about like like one of these.
01:28:38:06 – 01:28:55:06
Unknown
Yeah, exactly. Just like that. Yeah. You come up to somebody with that, and they you’re you’re putting them in fear that you do have a gun. And there are there’s federal law on that to I think, the US Supreme Court had a case where they talked about this, because I think it was a case involving a guy who robbed somebody with, like, a toy gun.
01:28:55:06 – 01:29:10:24
Unknown
And we see this a lot with juveniles. Now they’re going around robbing people with BB guns. Squirt guns. Looked like real gun. Yeah. I mean, it doesn’t matter. Yeah, it’s a felony robbery. And if it looks like a real gun, they treat it like a real gun, cause the victim does not know that it is not a real gun.
01:29:10:25 – 01:29:30:29
Unknown
Yeah, it’s like what the victim reasonably believes, right? You’re getting a deadly weapon enhancement on that. You know, those types of things. Yeah. And then there’s robbery involving force. So, again, that could be a number of things, but like inflicting bodily injury or threatening immediately bodily, immediate bodily injury during a theft, putting robbery involving fear.
01:29:30:29 – 01:29:51:05
Unknown
So putting someone in fear, bodily injury. There’s one specific for, I forget what subsection is. I think it’s a one for, which is for like purse snatching. Like that could be essentially if someone comes up to you in the grocery store and you have like, your purse on you and they take it off you, that’s what you’re talking about.
01:29:51:11 – 01:30:20:15
Unknown
However source however slight. Yes. Yeah. And actually it’s actually under V subsection five. It’s a but it’s a felony three. Yeah. But I did want to talk about this one specifically. Actually I was just making a note to myself about this, robbery by force, however slight I this is another thing that as a prosecutor many years ago that I used to see, and I actually am curious, if you guys saw this, people would go commit a retail theft and they would walk through the vestibule.
01:30:20:18 – 01:30:39:26
Unknown
And the loss prevention officer, this is again, a while ago would go up to them and actually like place hands on them. They would actually like put a hand on their shoulder and be like, sir. Come with me. And the person would do one of these and like rip away and run out. And we actually back then used to prosecute robbery by force, however slight.
01:30:39:27 – 01:30:53:19
Unknown
Or we would sometimes threaten to do that in the event that we couldn’t work out a plea deal. Yeah, but that I’m pretty sure that that’s gone. By the way, the dinosaur, it’s definitely a stretch. I mean, I think the theories there, I think the theory is sound. I know the case law and the jury instructions are pretty clear.
01:30:53:19 – 01:31:13:06
Unknown
It does not like this, that it’s force, however slight. Me taking the pencil pan out of his hand. Right. The the purse snatching incident makes sense. But in this scenario I looked up the statute and the distinction. The critical distinction here is that the property must be taken from the person of another, not from a retail established. No no, no.
01:31:13:07 – 01:31:30:20
Unknown
Yeah. So this was in the loss prevention officer’s hand. Yeah. If they if they had it in their hand and you took it from their hand, if they tried to take items back from you and then you grabbed the items from them. Yeah. Then that’s right. But just pulling away from them if they’re trying to guide you to the loss prevention, I guess in my head I was picturing something different.
01:31:30:21 – 01:31:48:02
Unknown
Like if they were trying to take possession of the card or whatever, and a person ripped it out of their hands or something, because, I mean, that would fit. Yeah, I think that what do you think about a situation? I actually think this probably wouldn’t fit, but I want to see your guys take on this where they actually get into like a physical fight with the loss prevention officer, not to get an item.
01:31:48:03 – 01:32:04:24
Unknown
Hold on. Not to get an item because they already have the items in their card or whatever. They already stolen them, but they get into a physical altercation. I mean, yeah, that’s assault. That could be Agassi. Yeah, but I don’t know if you get to robbery because you’re not actually, taking the property off the person of another there.
01:32:04:25 – 01:32:20:27
Unknown
It’s in the course of committing a theft though. Okay. So. Okay, I’ve seen I’ve seen that charge. I had a case where. But that’s a different subsection, right. Oh yes. Yeah. Yeah. Not not forced however slight. But yeah, it wouldn’t qualify under force however slight. But in the force or in the, in the it was the commission that.
01:32:20:29 – 01:32:36:08
Unknown
Yeah. Yeah that was him in the face basically there’s no it would qualify actually under that. You’re right. Yeah. Yeah okay interesting. But go ahead Justin you were kind of on a roll there. Well I thought we were talking about robbery and we were going off on forced, however slight. But there’s other ways, obviously, that we just talked about that.
01:32:36:08 – 01:32:54:16
Unknown
And then really the main other one would be robbery involving financial institution. So somebody essentially robbing a bank, right. Yeah. Yeah. It’s just so hard to do now. I mean yeah, you don’t really see that anymore. I mean, the, the golden age of robbing banks is over. If you’re gonna rock, if people are gonna rob someplace, they’re going to the gas station, right?
01:32:54:18 – 01:33:11:29
Unknown
Or, like the corner store. That’s. That’s where people are robbing. Same people robbing banks, though, and and I think under the federal system, doesn’t it enhance with each one or is it in the statute, the state statute here I can’t remember. Or is it a crime of violence? I don’t remember, it’s definitely crime. Yeah. So robberies, a crime of violence.
01:33:11:29 – 01:33:30:21
Unknown
But there’s something certain subsections though. Yeah, but isn’t there something I thought with the financial institutions where it’s kind of like another stackable offense some way? Or do they not care that I think TL is looking that up? What’s that. Oh the financial institution. Oh the fine. Yeah. Yeah, that’s actually what I was looking up. So yeah.
01:33:30:23 – 01:33:53:25
Unknown
Here. So there isn’t a separate crime in PA for, like, bank robbery? Like bank robbery is not a crime, right? Like it’s not titled that. Obviously in that scenario, you get, you do get charged with robbery, important distinctions again, with with robbery, you can’t have, robbery of a financial institution, like a bank or a credit union or whatever.
01:33:53:27 – 01:34:23:20
Unknown
That can enhance, like a robbery crime. And also, like we were saying before, if you’re using a weapon or the display of a potential weapon in a bank robbery, you know, the finger in the shirt type of situation that can enhance crimes. So, yeah. And, federally, there also is a separate federal bank robbery statute. It’s under 18 U.S.C. 2113, which does cover actual bank robbery or certain, you know, related contact, like credit institutions and things like that.
01:34:23:20 – 01:34:41:03
Unknown
I once prosecuted a case where a dude robbed a bank with a toy lightsaber. Yeah. I mean, I’m not kidding. Okay. They think it was a real lightsaber. Or was it just like. Well, I think it was the same deal. I think he had it. He was showing enough of it that they didn’t know what he had, but it turned out.
01:34:41:06 – 01:35:02:11
Unknown
So he wasn’t like in his Star Wars gear, like rolling in there like. Yeah, it was kind of a sad case, actually. I think the guy, the guy had some mental health issues, but literally, yeah. Oh boy. But that was I mean, my kids have Twilight sabers and they’re like plastic tubes that light up. Well, hey, I mean, the way I it was the way that he had it, it was kind of like a menacing thing, that bang.
01:35:02:14 – 01:35:22:07
Unknown
Because you wonder a lot of times, you know, do the bank, do the people in the bank, just when they see something like that or they just like you serious, dude. Like you don’t pay me enough for this serious, but. Well, I mean, I think banks generally are instructed if they’re presented with a situation that is possibly a bank robbery, they just give the money because it’s not worth the risk.
01:35:22:08 – 01:35:40:11
Unknown
Right, right. I mean, the tellers are and the enforcement on that, I mean, it’s like I mean, I was talking to a prosecutor one time in Mississippi, and he told he was telling me about, like a case that they had a bank robbery. Depending on how quickly they mobilize, I mean, for something like a bank robbery, I mean, it’s it’s kind of hard to get away from.
01:35:40:12 – 01:36:01:09
Unknown
It’s kind of hard to get away with that. I mean, the you got the dye packs, you got GPS trackers, you got all kinds of stuff that they can do on the banks end to track you. And then, you know, the police, obviously they’re going to respond in force to something like that. They’re going to have a perimeter set up, and they’ll start closing the net on you as you’re trying to get away.
01:36:01:12 – 01:36:24:14
Unknown
It’s very hard to get away from something. And if you do get away, I mean, we see this all the time and all kinds of cases like they can track you backwards probably as cameras now. Yeah. I mean, there’s cameras everywhere. But yeah, I’ve never actually had a bank robbery case. I had a case one time where it was a robbery from a Rite Aid, and they, they, these guys actually went in, and I think some of them did have guns.
01:36:24:14 – 01:36:41:06
Unknown
They went in behind the pharmacy and they started, it was like a smash and grab kind of thing where they were grabbing pills. I think they had the pharmacy guy at gunpoint. They made him open the safe because I think they keep some meds in a safe. Yeah. And they got like a bunch of, like, the heavy stuff.
01:36:41:11 – 01:37:02:12
Unknown
And, I didn’t know this, but there are GPS. There’s GPS in those pill bottles. Really? Yeah. Interesting. Because, I mean, it was comical when they they got out of the store. I mean, you could see the GPS. I mean, it was super good GPS. I mean, we could see from the Rite Aid store all the way they went.
01:37:02:12 – 01:37:26:09
Unknown
And it was like, okay, they went into that house like, they’re in that house now. That’s how precise the GPS was. It was like, you’re you’re not getting away. That’s crazy. I didn’t know that. They didn’t know that either. But yeah, obviously not clearly. I also just on that point, I’ve also had, nurses and people, medical professionals that I’ve defended that work in.
01:37:26:12 – 01:38:02:02
Unknown
Usually it’s a hospital who still, you like medications? A lot of times it’s fentanyl or other types of prescriptions. And that that’s actually prosecuted kind of separately as well as it relates. Yeah. As it relates to being a drug crime specifically, but also a theft, you know, okay. Well, I think the bottom line with robbery, guys is that it can be committed without violence and without force, with just the threat or the belief that that could be committed, could be present or with force.
01:38:02:06 – 01:38:23:15
Unknown
And obviously, if it’s if it’s specifically with fourths or with the presentation of something that couldn’t provide force, like a firearm or something that might be believed to be a firearm, you know, the gun and the shirt or a replica gun or a toy gun that looks real. These types of things can still be prosecuted like real guns.
01:38:23:18 – 01:38:44:11
Unknown
I did prosecute a number of robberies. Bank robberies? When I was in the DA’s office towards the end of my tenure there, I was in the Major Crimes Unit, which we we prosecuted specifically things like bank robberies. It was like what our unit did. And, I remember I prosecuted a bank robbery out of the bank that I banked at.
01:38:44:13 – 01:39:01:26
Unknown
So I would actually I had like the tellers that like, I would see in there from a randomly day to day basis were actually my witnesses in that case. And for, you know, the five years that that bank branch was still open, that I went in there afterwards, they would always like clap for me and stuff. When I came in there, it was so weird.
01:39:01:29 – 01:39:18:01
Unknown
I actually kind of stopped going to that bank because it became a little bit uncomfortable. But all right, what I’d like to do is I want to do I want to some this up guys with I want to do a little kind of back and forth. I’m going to throw a few myths at you about thefts. And I just wanted to go.
01:39:18:02 – 01:39:36:03
Unknown
We’ll start with you, Tim. And then adjusting. I’m going to pop over to you. I’m going to go on all three of us. I’m just gonna fire them at you guys and just give me the answers. Is it true? Is it not? Is it a myth? So first, Tim, for you. If the item that is themed is less than $50, is that a crime?
01:39:36:06 – 01:39:51:27
Unknown
But on your your card, it’s clearly a crime. Yeah, clearly a crime. Clearly a theft. That might be a lower level crime. So, like, not important that it’s not a crime. Yeah. I mean, I’ve had people either is a crime or not. I’ve had people that have stolen like a pack of gum and that’s like a dollar five, you know.
01:39:52:03 – 01:40:09:13
Unknown
Yeah. And it’s. I’ve seen cases where like, they’ve stolen, you know, some candy or like beef jerky out of a gas station, but they have so many prior retail thefts, it’s a felony. It’s a felony, right. Which is crazy. And like, person could go to state prison for that, you know? All right. Justin, you have to leave the store physically.
01:40:09:14 – 01:40:29:29
Unknown
You have to be outside before you can be charged with retail theft or shoplifting. I know I hit on this already. That is a myth. That is a myth, yes. Past points of sale. Yeah. Okay, Tim, if you return the property, if you say I’m sorry, the charges go away. This one is kind of breaks both ways. Yeah, it’s a little more complicated.
01:40:29:29 – 01:40:53:00
Unknown
Usually. No. But sometimes that’s good enough. Most of the times, though, if you’ve consummated the theft by actually attempting it and you’re caught at the. At that point, it’s too late for abandonment of the attempt, so you can still be charged even. I mean, that’s the bottom line. You might be able to resolve the case by the I’m sorry, by paying restitution by.
01:40:53:06 – 01:41:12:19
Unknown
We talked about how you repair that. And with retail theft specifically, frankly, even if you return the items, it may not mean that you don’t have to pay restitution because food items don’t go back on the shop. Right? It’s not. Yeah. If you take a food item and you attempt to steal it, they’re gonna they’ll they’ll recover the item from you, but they can’t resell it.
01:41:12:20 – 01:41:33:25
Unknown
Which means you bought that item. Yep. Yeah. You owe that restitution. Yeah. I’ve had a lot, a lot food specifically. Yeah. And who’s going to want to buy food that someone else hadn’t had their grubby hands on had in their pants? Yeah. Or that had it was half cooked with a table. It was a guy that was notorious in one of the offices where I was, where I mean, he was stealing, like, crab legs and stuff, and he would stuff him down his pants.
01:41:33:26 – 01:42:04:29
Unknown
Yeah. So that’s like, man, if they get that back, they they can’t do anything with it, right. Crap. Yeah. All right. All right Justin, over to you. If you didn’t personally steal something you cannot be charged with receiving stolen property. Incorrect. Yes. As we said, basically whether you’re the person that initially stole the item, if you retain that item or come into possession of that item, whether or not you paid someone for it, if you believe it reasonably believe it to be stolen.
01:42:05:01 – 01:42:29:15
Unknown
You can be charged with receiving stolen property. Yeah. All right. Tim, a first time retail theft is always a summary offense. No, not if it’s over $150 value. It’s a misdemeanor one. If it is, if it’s over $1,000, it’s a felony. And yeah, I mean absolutely. And first time retail thefts a lot of times are not summary offenses.
01:42:29:15 – 01:42:45:21
Unknown
They can’t complete them down to summer. Yeah. Sometimes we complete them down. That’s another way to work them out. Get them done at the DJ. Yeah for sure. All right. Justin, if the business does not want to prosecute, you say you work for them and you’re an employee, and they, you know, they just they’re willing to kind of sweep it under the rug.
01:42:45:24 – 01:43:06:11
Unknown
Then the charges will go away automatically. No, I would say no matter what the situation is, if you steal something from a business and they don’t want to prosecute, if the police get called out there, you’re likely getting charged. Yeah. It’s kind of like what we said in the past with domestics, right? Yeah. Like, we see this sometimes with the husband and the wife to get in a fight.
01:43:06:12 – 01:43:24:21
Unknown
You know, the wife or husband gets hurt, and then the spouse wants to drop the charges, but the police are already the ones who have brought the charges. They’re the one the DA’s office prosecuting the charges. Now, is it a factor? Might it work in your favor in a plea negotiation? Hell, yeah. But it’s not like you’re just not going to court for it or the thing’s going away.
01:43:24:23 – 01:43:42:29
Unknown
Like there’s still the decision to charge or not. Charge is the common law. Bingo. Yeah, that’s that’s good one. All right, Tim, back over to you. If you pay restitution, you won’t have a criminal record. Maybe, it depends on if they’re agreeing to that as part of the the resolution, if it’s a five rule 546 dismissal at the the magistrate.
01:43:43:00 – 01:44:05:13
Unknown
That’s a rule of criminal procedure which allows dismissal upon satisfaction and agreement by both parties. So that usually requires you make restitution. There’s an agreement as to who pays costs. There’s consent from the victim. The Commonwealth and the interests of justice are not adversely affected. Then yeah, if you pay, the rest of the charges can be Tim, you’re giving away the secret sauce, but that that is the one we use a lot, you know.
01:44:05:15 – 01:44:27:01
Unknown
And the six is the same is the same thing. But it’s a rule specifically for if it’s past the magistrate level, that’s what we do downtown. But let’s let’s be real about it. Although the rule requires satisfaction of restitution and agreement of the parties to get to that point, sometimes you got to learn and earn. Like sometimes you got to do stuff for everybody to agree to that and realistically.
01:44:27:06 – 01:44:44:09
Unknown
And that happens automatically. Yeah. And a lot of counties are not even going to entertain it. Yeah. Unless you have restitution in hand. Yeah. So like but again they’re not even in a lot of times you’re gonna have to do a class or a course before they’ll even, I’m saying like they’re not going to entertain this abstract notion that, yeah, I’ll make restitution maybe in like a year.
01:44:44:12 – 01:45:03:03
Unknown
Oh, yeah. It’s like payment in full. Exactly. It’s pretty much like now there’s actually there’s a number of our deejays in York. Maybe even all of them, who if you don’t have the court costs and the rest in full, they will not even, like you said, entertain it. Yeah, or they’ll give you, like, a drop dead date.
01:45:03:05 – 01:45:19:21
Unknown
Like they you may have usually like. Well, yeah, it could be. It could be like week. Some of them maybe we’ll go out 30 days to pay the court costs maybe. And and if you don’t then it’s basically as part of the agreement. It’s automatically a stipulation moved forward to the Court of Common Pleas. And you’re continued to be prosecuted.
01:45:19:24 – 01:45:37:23
Unknown
Yeah, that’s that’s another way to do it. But you’re right about the restitution that’s got to for sure be be in full, to get that rule because like I’ve seen cases where either the person has wanted to come in and be like, if I pay restitution, can we dismiss the charges? And the natural next question is, okay, do you have the money to pay that?
01:45:37:29 – 01:46:00:21
Unknown
And if they’re like, well, I’m not working and I don’t have any money. And, you know, the next question out of the judge’s mouth is, well, how are you going to pay this? And if you don’t have a clear answer, then it’s not an option. Yeah. And again, this is also why if you have a lawyer who can figure out all that stuff and talk to everybody ahead of time and not just walk into court as an empty suit and beg for it, you’re not going to be prepared.
01:46:00:21 – 01:46:16:26
Unknown
You’re not gonna have the money. You’re not gonna be able to get that outcome right. Like, you got to prep that stuff, all right? This one’s a kind of a softball, but theft we talk about this. Theft is always a misdemeanor, you know? Hell no value. And, yeah, depending on what the property is, well, we’ll bump it up to felony.
01:46:16:28 – 01:46:38:27
Unknown
Really? Felony three, 2 or 1. Yeah. All right. Tim, this one is one we kind of unpacked a little bit, but we didn’t go into super big detail. A dispute with an employer over money is automatically a theft. I mean, it depends. Yeah, I would say yes, but, it could be. It could be. Yeah, it could be.
01:46:39:00 – 01:47:03:17
Unknown
Yeah. And again, this kind of gets to the whole idea of like, if the business doesn’t want to prosecute, I mean, that that sometimes isn’t really the equation, but maybe it’s civil. You know, we talked about how some things are civil in nature, especially with like contracting contractors, subcontractors. That relationship gets hairy real quick because by the time the customer is getting stiffed or there’s work that that’s stopped because there’s a payment issue or something.
01:47:03:19 – 01:47:30:02
Unknown
That usually is a trickle down. And so you end up with subcontractors who are not being paid by the contractor, or perhaps they’ve reneged on work that they’re supposed to do for the contractor. That stuff could be criminal, but it may also just be civil. So a lot of times though, like you’re looking at what, what the intent of the person was, if it looks like the person’s being shady and they are trying to pull a fast one on somebody else, you’re you’re probably talking about a theft.
01:47:30:06 – 01:47:51:19
Unknown
Even if there are civil components to it, it’s still probably a theft. But if you’ve got two sides that are both acting in good faith and then there’s a dispute about money, probably not criminal. Yeah, well, guys, I hope you’ve learned a lot today about theft charges and the different ways that theft charges can occur. And why?
01:47:51:23 – 01:48:09:25
Unknown
Frankly, you should take any type of a theft charge very seriously. They are not always minor offenses. You may think they’re minor, but they may be major. And this is why you need to consult with with counsel, with an attorney before you make those assumptions. And maybe don’t prepare properly for when you actually have to go to court.
01:48:10:02 – 01:48:43:05
Unknown
The grading of the offenses, as we’ve discussed, can dramatically change depending on the value of the property and prior offenses. That’s a huge aggregating factor. And again, I kind of talked very poignantly about how theft cases have long reaching consequences indirectly that are very different from the actual sentence you get in court for that theft crime, things like getting into colleges, getting jobs, having crimes of criminal falsely on your record, crimes of dishonesty and what that means for your future.
01:48:43:07 – 01:49:05:01
Unknown
And I promise you, if you have a crime of criminal falsely on your record, you know your your future is going to go one way when it very well could have gone the other had you just fixed that the first time around. We say about, you know, a perfect, you know, example. This is the or, you know, congruent example is that as I have, I preached in prior episodes of the driving under suspension charges.
01:49:05:03 – 01:49:25:25
Unknown
If you just fixed the first one, you don’t end up in the driver’s license suspension black hole. It’s somewhat similar here. If you can fix the first one, you avoid all the black hole stuff that happens. If you end up with that on your record and the aggregation, that can happen later with these theft offenses. There are many, many defenses to theft crimes.
01:49:25:25 – 01:49:53:02
Unknown
Some of them are procedural, some of them are rule based. That’s how we fix these. But some of them also involve intent, you know, ownership information, identification issues, valuation of the property. You know, maybe there’s a dispute on that which can change the gradation of the crime. And then, of course, the investigation itself. I mean, there’s a lot of factual circumstances that are individual to each case within the investigation that can change the theft crime, maybe to no crime at all.
01:49:53:05 – 01:50:11:12
Unknown
So, guys, the moral it is, we say it all the time having an attorney evaluate your specific situation and what is available to you to fix this is the way that this will get fixed and the way you will protect yourself, whether it’s us or someone else. Please protect yourself. Talk to an attorney. We’re happy to talk to you here at Kearney Law.
01:50:11:18 – 01:50:29:27
Unknown
That’s why we do these podcasts. We want to get this information out to you. We want to talk to you about your individual circumstance. So reach out to us, hit us up on our socials, you know, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram. Check out our podcast here. Now we defend on Spotify and YouTube. As always guys, thanks for watching. It’s been a pleasure.
01:50:29:27 – 01:50:31:14
Unknown
We’ll see you next week. Take care.
