Long Beach Forgery Defense Lawyer

The charge

What Penal Code 470 requires

Penal Code 470 covers four kinds of conduct, and all of them require a specific intent to defraud. Signing someone else’s name, or a fictitious name, to one of the instruments the statute lists. Counterfeiting or forging another person’s seal or handwriting. Altering or falsifying a record such as a will, a deed, or a court judgment. And falsely making, altering, passing, or attempting to pass any of a long list of documents knowing them to be false, which includes checks, money orders, promissory notes, contracts, vehicle ownership documents, stock certificates, and lottery tickets.

Two points decide most cases. Intent to defraud must exist at the time of the act, and it means an intent to cause a loss or to deprive someone of a right; nobody actually has to lose money for the crime to be complete, but a genuine belief that you had authority to sign is not forgery. And the document has to be one the statute covers. Passing a forged instrument is a separate way of committing the same offense, so a person who did not write anything can still be charged for using it.

Sources: Penal Code 470(a)–(d) — signing another’s name, counterfeiting a seal or handwriting, falsifying a record, and the list of covered instruments.

Related charges

What gets filed alongside forgery, and what is not forgery

Identity theft is not forgery. Penal Code 530.5 makes it a separate wobbler to wilfully obtain and use another person’s personal identifying information for an unlawful purpose, and it is frequently charged alongside forgery rather than instead of it. The distinction matters for a practical reason: being convicted of both takes the case out of the Proposition 47 misdemeanor rule in Penal Code 473(b).

Other charges that travel with forgery include passing fictitious checks under Penal Code 476, theft by false pretenses under Penal Code 484 for what the document obtained, burglary where the entry into a bank or store was made with the intent to pass the instrument, and grand theft where the amount exceeds the threshold. Counterfeiting United States currency is a federal offense under 18 U.S.C. 471, prosecuted in federal court, and is a different matter from a state forgery charge.

Sources: Penal Code 530.5 — identity theft, a separate offense; Penal Code 476 — fictitious or altered checks; Penal Code 484 — theft by false pretenses; 18 U.S.C. 471 — federal counterfeiting of obligations or securities of the United States.

The office

How the Law Offices of Patrick S. Aguirre defends forgery cases

The office has defended criminal cases in Long Beach and across Los Angeles County for nearly three decades. Forgery cases turn on documents, and the documents are obtained and read: the instrument itself, the account records, the authority the client actually had, and the communications that show what everyone understood at the time. Where the amount brings the case within Penal Code 473(b), that is raised early, because it changes what the case is.

For a non-citizen a crime-of-dishonesty conviction carries serious immigration consequences and should not be resolved without immigration advice. The firm has offices in Long Beach and Downey and speaks Spanish.