09-04-2013, 04:34 PM
CRIMES AGAINST PROPERTY
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The text discusses other crimes against property, including robbery, theft, fraud, identity theft, and others. There are numerous crimes against property in all state statutes and the numbers are simply too vast to go into detail here. Therefore, this chapter will focus on some of the property offenses outlined in the text.
Robbery
Depending on whom you ask, robbery could either be considered a property crime or a violent crime. In essence, it is both. Robbery involves the use of force or threatened use of force to commit a theft. If no force or threat of force is used, then the offense is simply theft. Thus, it is not wrong to consider robbery either a violent crime or a property crime, since elements of both are present.
State v. Thomas
The defendant left a grocery store with two bags of goods that he did not purchase. As he left the store, he dropped the bags and walked away from the store. An off-duty police officer followed the defendant into a nearby laundromat and asked him to step outside. They proceeded to walk back to the grocery store. At the front door of the grocery store, the defendant struggled with the officer in an attempt to run away.
Fraud
The text covers various types of fraud in the next chapter (Chapter 14) regarding white-collar crime, but Ohio treats fraud as a type of theft offense. The types of fraud covered in Chapter 2913 of the Ohio Revised Code are Medicaid fraud, tampering with records, defrauding creditors, illegal use of food stamps, insurance fraud, and worker’s compensation fraud. Despite these different types of fraud, each involves the same element: receiving some sort of benefit by means of deception, falsification, etc. For instance, an individual with a back problem may claim that he was injured on the job. If his employer provides worker’s compensation, that individual may receive benefits or reimbursement for the medical expenses or time off from work spent recuperating. An individual engages in worker’s compensation fraud if a) his back pain was not the result of a job injury or b) there is no injury and the individual is faking. Either way, the individual is deceiving his employer in order to receive benefits that he is not entitled to.
State v. Moning
In this case, the defendant, a police officer, used a computer terminal in the police department’s impound lot to access the Regional Crime Information Center (RCIC) in order to get some information on another person. The RCIC is one of three databases utilized by the department to inquire about the criminal history of suspects. Access to these databases is restricted; they may only be utilized for “legitimate law enforcement purposes” and officers are trained and informed about the use of these databases.
Forgery
The final theft-related offense that is discussed here is forgery. Forgery offenses in Ohio include simple forgery, criminal simulation, and counterfeiting. As stated in the text, forgery is the creation of false documents or alteration of existing documents for the purpose of defrauding others. In Ohio, forgery includes impersonating the writing of another; in effect, signing another person’s name to a document without that person’s authority. It also consists of trying to pass off that document as one’s own (i.e., uttering, according to the text definition). Finally, forgery can also involve the forging of identification cards and the subsequent sale of these cards to others. The punishment for forgery varies depending on the loss to the victim, similar to theft. If there is no loss to the victim, forgery is considered a fifth-degree felony. Any loss to the victim, in the same increments as found in theft offenses, increases the severity of punishment for forgery. The most severe level of punishment for forgery is a second-degree felony, when the loss to the victim exceeds $25,000 (Ohio Revised Code, §2913.31, 1999).