Title PEN, California Penal Code

With the concurrence of the Attorney General, the district attorney may transfer the responsibility for the prosecution of any crime committed by prisoners in physical custody in the state prisons in the district attorney’s county. As used in this section, crimes committed while …

(a) Every person who shall feloniously steal, take, carry, lead, or drive away the personal property of another, or who shall fraudulently appropriate property which has been entrusted to him or her, or who shall knowingly and designedly, by any false or fraudulent representation…

(a) Any person who knowingly gives false information or provides false verification as to the person’s true identity or as to the person’s ownership interest in property or the person’s authority to sell property in order to receive money or other valuable consideration from a pa…

Any person who receives money for the purpose of obtaining or paying for services, labor, materials or equipment and willfully fails to apply such money for such purpose by either willfully failing to complete the improvements for which funds were provided or willfully failing to…

Any person who submits a false voucher to obtain construction loan funds and does not use the funds for the purpose for which the claim was submitted is guilty of embezzlement. (Added by Stats. 1965, Ch. 1145.)

As used in this section and Sections 484e to 484j, inclusive: (1) “Cardholder” means any person to whom an access card is issued or any person who has agreed with the card issuer to pay obligations arising from the issuance of an access card to another person. (2) “Access card” m…

(a) Every person who, with intent to defraud, sells, transfers, or conveys, an access card, without the cardholder’s or issuer’s consent, is guilty of grand theft. (b) Every person, other than the issuer, who within any consecutive 12-month period, acquires access cards issued in…

(a) Every person who, with the intent to defraud, designs, makes, alters, or embosses a counterfeit access card or utters or otherwise attempts to use a counterfeit access card is guilty of forgery. (b) A person other than the cardholder or a person authorized by him or her who, …

Every person who, with the intent to defraud, (a) uses, for the purpose of obtaining money, goods, services, or anything else of value, an access card or access card account information that has been altered, obtained, or retained in violation of Section 484e or 484f, or an acces…

Every retailer or other person who, with intent to defraud: (a) Furnishes money, goods, services or anything else of value upon presentation of an access card obtained or retained in violation of Section 484e or an access card which he or she knows is a counterfeit access card or…

(a) Every person who possesses an incomplete access card, with intent to complete it without the consent of the issuer, is guilty of a misdemeanor. (b) Every person who, with the intent to defraud, makes, alters, varies, changes, or modifies access card account information on any…

Any person who publishes the number or code of an existing, canceled, revoked, expired or nonexistent access card, personal identification number, computer password, access code, debit card number, bank account number, or the numbering or coding which is employed in the issuance …

One who finds lost property under circumstances which give him knowledge of or means of inquiry as to the true owner, and who appropriates such property to his own use, or to the use of another person not entitled thereto, without first making reasonable and just efforts to find …

Theft is divided into two degrees, the first of which is termed grand theft; the second, petty theft. (Amended by Stats. 1927, Ch. 619.)

Grand theft is theft committed in any of the following cases: (a) When the money, labor, real property, or personal property taken is of a value exceeding nine hundred fifty dollars ($950), except as provided in subdivision (b). (b) Notwithstanding subdivision (a), grand theft is…

(a) Every person who feloniously steals, takes, carries, leads, or drives away any horse, mare, gelding, any bovine animal, any caprine animal, mule, jack, jenny, sheep, lamb, hog, sow, boar, gilt, barrow, or pig, which is the personal property of another, or who fraudulently app…

Every person who converts real estate of the value of two hundred fifty dollars ($250) or more into personal property by severance from the realty of another, and with felonious intent to do so, steals, takes, and carries away that property is guilty of grand theft and is punisha…

Every person who converts real estate of the value of less than two hundred fifty dollars ($250) into personal property by severance from the realty of another, and with felonious intent to do so steals, takes, and carries away that property is guilty of petty theft and is punish…

Every person who feloniously steals, takes, and carries away, or attempts to take, steal, and carry from any mining claim, tunnel, sluice, undercurrent, riffle box, or sulfurate machine, another’s gold dust, amalgam, or quicksilver is guilty of grand theft and is punishable by im…

(a) Every person who feloniously steals, takes, or carries away a companion animal of another which is of a value exceeding nine hundred fifty dollars ($950) is guilty of grand theft. (b) (1) For purposes of this section, “companion animal” means an animal, including, but not lim…

(a) Every person who feloniously steals, takes, or carries away a companion animal of another which is of a value not exceeding nine hundred fifty dollars ($950) is guilty of petty theft. (b) (1) For purposes of this section, “companion animal” means an animal, including, but not…

Every person who steals or maliciously takes or carries away any animal of another for purposes of sale, medical research, slaughter, or other commercial use, or who knowingly, by any false representation or pretense, defrauds another person of any animal for purposes of sale, me…

(a) Every person who steals, takes, or carries away cargo of another, if the cargo taken is of a value exceeding nine hundred fifty dollars ($950), except as provided in Sections 487, 487a, and 487d, is guilty of grand theft. (b) For the purposes of this section, “cargo” means an…

Any person who defrauds a housing program of a public housing authority of more than four hundred dollars ($400) is guilty of grand theft. (Added by Stats. 2008, Ch. 105, Sec. 1. Effective January 1, 2009.)

Every person who steals, takes, or carries away copper materials of another, including, but not limited to, copper wire, copper cable, copper tubing, and copper piping, which are of a value exceeding nine hundred fifty dollars ($950) is guilty of grand theft. Grand theft of coppe…

A person who steals, takes, or carries away tractors, all-terrain vehicles, or other agricultural equipment, or any portion thereof, used in the acquisition or production of food for public consumption, which are of a value exceeding nine hundred fifty dollars ($950), is guilty o…

(a) Notwithstanding Sections 215 and 216 of the Labor Code, the intentional theft of wages in an amount greater than nine hundred fifty dollars ($950) from any one employee, or two thousand three hundred fifty dollars ($2,350) in the aggregate from two or more employees, by an em…

Theft in other cases is petty theft. (Amended by Stats. 1927, Ch. 619.)

Grand theft is punishable as follows: (a) If the grand theft involves the theft of a firearm, by imprisonment in the state prison for 16 months, or two or three years. (b) If the grand theft involves a violation of Section 487a, by imprisonment in a county jail not exceeding one …

Petty theft is punishable by fine not exceeding one thousand dollars ($1,000), or by imprisonment in the county jail not exceeding six months, or both. (Amended by Stats. 1976, Ch. 1125.)

(a) Petty theft, where the value of the money, labor, real or personal property taken is of a value which does not exceed fifty dollars ($50), may be charged as a misdemeanor or an infraction, at the discretion of the prosecutor, provided that the person charged with the offense …

(a) Notwithstanding Section 487 or any other provision of law defining grand theft, obtaining any property by theft where the value of the money, labor, real or personal property taken does not exceed nine hundred fifty dollars ($950) shall be considered petty theft and shall be …

Notwithstanding any other law, in any case involving one or more acts of theft or shoplifting, including, but not limited to, violations of Sections 459.5, 484, 488, and 490.2, the value of property or merchandise stolen may be aggregated into a single count or charge, with the s…

(a) A person who commits any of the following acts is guilty of organized retail theft and shall be punished pursuant to subdivision (b): (1) Acts in concert with one or more persons to steal merchandise from one or more merchant’s premises or online marketplace with the intent t…

(a) Upon a first conviction for petty theft involving merchandise taken from a merchant’s premises or a book or other library materials taken from a library facility, a person shall be punished by a mandatory fine of not less than fifty dollars ($50) and not more than one thousan…

(a) A person employed by an amusement park may detain a person for a reasonable time for the purpose of conducting an investigation in a reasonable manner whenever the person employed by the amusement park has probable cause to believe the person to be detained is violating lawfu…

(a) The Legislature finds that free newspapers provide a key source of information to the public, in many cases providing an important alternative to the news and ideas expressed in other local media sources. The Legislature further finds that the unauthorized taking of multiple …

(a) A court sentencing a defendant for any violation described in subdivision (b) shall consider issuing an order restraining the defendant from entering the premises of the retail establishment, that may be valid for up to two years, as determined by the court. (b) Subdivision (…

(a) Any person who, having been convicted of any crime against the state amounting to a felony, and imprisoned in the state prison or incarcerated in county jail pursuant to subdivision (h) of Section 1170 for that conviction, is granted a pardon by the Governor for the reason th…

(a) A claim under Section 4900, accompanied by a statement of the facts constituting the claim, verified in the manner provided for the verification of complaints in civil actions, is required to be presented by the claimant to the California Victim Compensation Board within a pe…

(a) If the provisions of Section 851.865 or 1485.55 apply in any claim, the California Victim Compensation Board shall, within 90 days of the filing of the claim, calculate the compensation for the claimant pursuant to Section 4904 and approve payment to the claimant if sufficien…

(a) Except as provided in Sections 851.865 and 1485.55, and in subdivision (b) of Section 4900, the board shall fix a time and place for the hearing of the claim. At the hearing the claimant shall introduce evidence in support of the claim, and the Attorney General may introduce …

(a) If the evidence shows that the crime with which the claimant was charged was either not committed at all, or, if committed, was not committed by the claimant, or for claims pursuant to subdivision (b) of Section 4900, the Attorney General’s office has not met their burden of …

On or before September 1 each year, the California Victim Compensation Board shall submit an annual report to the Joint Legislative Budget Committee on approved erroneous conviction claims that were paid in the prior fiscal year. The report shall include a listing of all individu…

The California Victim Compensation Board is immune from liability for damages, including prejudgment interest, for any decision on a claim under this chapter. The immunity granted to the board under this section does not change or affect the immunity provided by Section 820.2 of …

The California Victim Compensation Board is hereby authorized to make all needful rules and regulations consistent with the law for the purpose of carrying into effect this chapter. (Amended by Stats. 2016, Ch. 31, Sec. 255. (SB 836) Effective June 27, 2016.)