Shoplifting, Stealing, Juvenile Law, Juvenile, Juvenile Record, Crime, Criminal Law, Self Checkout, Money, Moral Turpitude, Integrity.
What To Do When… Stealing Is Your Jam.
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The objective of the What To Do When… podcast is to discuss common legal scenarios faced by everyday citizens in Virginia. Critzer and Cardani practice law throughout Virginia and focus their practice around the state’s capital of Richmond, in the Piedmont region. Tune in and subscribe to learn about legal topics such as reckless driving by speeding, bad lawyers, Will Knows Weed, juvenile defense, juvenile sex crimes, reckless driving, the legalization of marijuana in Virginia, divorce 101, Child Support, There is Still Hope, and others.
What To Do When… Stealing Is Your Jam.
On this legal video podcast chat in Critzer Cardani’s What To Do When… podcast series, join our hosts Jackie Critzer and Scott Cardani as they chat about What To Do When… Stealing Is Your Jam. This video and audio podcast episode focuses on Stealing and Shoplifting both on the adult and juvenile side of the law here in Virginia.
Tune in today for not only our top 3 take-aways, but also some chat about the following subject matters and other helpful action items from a ‘legal chat slant’ from Critzer Cardani’s legal partners.
* Shoplifting Basics and Legal Implications
* Shoplifting Laws and Penalties
* Self-Checkout and Surveillance
* Jackie and Scott discuss the concept of delayed integrity, where children should not immediately confess to crimes without consulting their parents or a lawyer.
* Consequences of Shoplifting
* You Have the right to remain silent, and anything you say can and will be used against you.
The objective of the What To Do When… podcast is to discuss common legal scenarios faced by everyday citizens in Virginia. Critzer and Cardani practice law throughout Virginia and focus their practice around the state’s capital of Richmond, in the Piedmont region. Tune in and subscribe to learn about legal topics such as reckless driving by speeding, bad lawyers, Will Knows Weed, juvenile defense, juvenile sex crimes, reckless driving, the legalization of marijuana in Virginia, divorce 101, Child Support, There is Still Hope and others.
Thank you for sending us your feedback, questions, or topic suggestions for future #WTDW | What To Do When… episodes by emailing [email protected].
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Transcript:
What To Do When… Intro 00:01
Welcome to What To Do When… A podcast from real lawyers with real perspective, where we explore a variety of legal issues and scenarios. Each week we focus on a new topic and discuss what to do when and if any of these legal scenarios ever happened to you or a loved one. With over 40 years of combined legal experience, our hosts offer their unique perspectives and insights on a range of real life legal situations.
Jackie Critzer 0:28
Hey, welcome back to another podcast at Critzer Cardani in Richmond, Virginia, I’m Jackie.
Scott Cardani 0:34
I’m Scott. Sorry. I almost died there, Jackie. What’s on the docket for today?
Jackie Critzer 0:37
What To When… Stealing is Your Jam.
Scott Cardani 0:42
What do you mean? Like peanut butter and jelly, jam.
Jackie Critzer 0:44
Sort Sort of.
Okay, So folks, we wanted to cover this today, because actually, there’s been a real increase in these little thefts, crimes, especially shoplifting. But, you know, most people don’t know what it is. Then again, I think we always have to start at the beginning with this.
I think that’s great. What? What is shoplifting?
Scott Cardani 1:02
Yeah actually, before that.
Jackie Critzer 1:03
Okay, oh – even before that.
Scott Cardani 1:05
Let me go there. This includes your juvenile, your child, your son and daughter, all those things, because there’s a lot of crimes. And so we have taught and been taught every time in our society that you tell the truth.
Jackie Critzer 1:19
Of course,
Scott Cardani 1:19
You know, and you know…
Jackie Critzer 1:21
Which isn’t bad, you should tell your kids that.
Scott Cardani 1:23
You should tell the truth. My caveat, though, is, when it becomes a crime, you don’t have to incriminate yourself. Soo you don’t have to tell on yourself.
Jackie Critzer 1:32
Right.
When there’s a crime involved, and we talk about this all the time, and people probably think I’m crazy, I’m gonna parent. I wasn’t my kid to tell the truth and be honest and have integrity.
Of course you do.
Scott Cardani 1:41
You’re not what, where I would call this delayed integrity. Might be the way to answer it at that moment, your child, especially juvenile, isn’t smart enough to answer the questions they’re asking them. Most adults aren’t smart enough to answer the questions they’re asking them. Sometimes I think I’m not smart enough to answer the questions they’re asking.
Jackie Critzer 1:58
So really, what you’re saying is, just like we have in…
Scott Cardani 2:01
EVERYTHING… Ha.
Jackie Critzer 2:02
1010 other podcasts, maybe more speeding, getting pulled over any encounter with authority or the police, is you do need to have integrity, And it is perfectly okay to say I’m not comfortable answering your questions without my parents or without my lawyer. That is okay to say to all authority figures, including police.
Scott Cardani 2:24
You Have the right to remain silent, and anything you say can and will be used against you. Okay, got that’s the simple but I wanted to start there, because you don’t understand how important that is most of the time in a case, I can do so much more when you haven’t spoken first, so I’ll leave it there. Okay, let’s start with shoplifting.
Jackie Critzer 2:44
Shoplifting.
Shoplifting is when you go into Target, Walmart, gyms, I don’t care where it is,
711
Scott Cardani 2:54
And you go in and you take an item, and you walk out of the store without without paying is shoplifting,
Jackie Critzer 3:02
Okay – Does it matter the the price sale, like the value of the thing you’re stealing? Does that change shoplifting to something else?
Scott Cardani 3:10
Yeah shoplifting, it’s under $500 a misdemeanor, over $500 as a felony.
Jackie Critzer 3:14
I thought it was $200,
Scott Cardani 3:17
They just changed them.
See it’s important to know your rights, know your charges.
Here’s one, Jackie, say I’m in Target, and I’m back in the back, and there’s a bunch of headphones. Let’s just say I’m looking at getting new headphones, because these are jank. But anyways, we’re getting headphones. And there’s the you know, you can get headphones for 15 bucks.
Jackie Critzer 3:40
Or 500 bucks.
Scott Cardani 3:41
Or 500 bucks. So what happens if I just take off the sticker here for 15 bucks and put it over top of the $499 ticket?
Jackie Critzer 3:49
Well, first of all, that that would be very silly, but also illegal, right? I mean, you can’t do that, yeah, yeah, unfortunately or fortunately, yes. So again, price changing is illegal.
Scott Cardani 3:58
You’re going up to the counter and you’re paying $15 for a $400 item that’s shoplifting. You’re shoplifting the difference, basically.
Sure.
So I mean, you’re walking out of the store knowingly. I mean, you have to have knowingly done it, obviously, if somebody else changed the sticker before you got there and you didn’t know it, you thought it was the deal of the century. Most of the time, deals of the century are never deals of the century. So you might want to check, because you don’t want to check because you don’t want to go to jail over something stupid you didn’t do.
Jackie Critzer 4:22
Well, I’ll tell you that if you take the $14.99 headphones with or the sticker from that and you, you, or you’re carrying out your $500 headphones up to the cashier, you’re going to be the one suspected of doing the sticker change, not the person before you, whether it was your cousin or someone you didn’t even know. Or you never even knew what happened, they they’re going to suspect that you’re the one who did that. They’re going to try look at the tapes and do all the things. So be, I mean, be wise about it as well. But yeah, sticker changing.
Scott Cardani 4:54
Let me say this too, for a while there we were getting away from, I think, from shoplifting. I mean, you saw the media, everybody. Allowed to walk in places, walk out.
Jackie Critzer 5:02
All the looting…
Scott Cardani 5:03
And then sure…. What’s going on shoplifting. Looting is shoplifting. When you walk into a store anyways, don’t get down the road. But now it seems like there’s just been this resurgence of people tightening up again. So be on your P’s and Q’s. You know, most of the people who shoplift have the money in their pocket to pay for it.
Jackie Critzer 5:22
We talk about self checkout?
Scott Cardani 5:23
Yeah, big time, yeah.
Jackie Critzer 5:25
So I like to do self checkout at Walmart. I like to do self checkout at Target. Sometimes I do to the grocery store. There’s a neighborhood Walmart market in Hanover that I love, and almost every register is self checkout, and I think it’s great. But I’ve always wondered, how do they really monitor the shrinkage, or the or the shoplifting? Well, they do, right? They have cameras above you, around you, they’re watching.
Scott Cardani 5:48
Through the scanner itself usually. I mean, they’re, they’re everywhere. I mean, so I’ve had a lot of those cases where, you know, you’re bumping through. You pick the, let’s just say I got a pan in it, and microphone, yeah, my microphone is a scanner. What people do will go like this, so shifty. They’ll pull one under and one over this way or whatever, and it’s right there. And then they put in their bag and walk out the store. They’ve just shoplifted again.
Jackie Critzer 6:14
Right.
Scott Cardani 6:15
So you know, it’ll scanners are scary to me, even though I don’t like shelf checkout because I figure I pay the store to go there and then you check out, but that’s just me. But anyways, and the reason I don’t like it, though, more than that, is of that reason, what if I make a mistake, what if I forget something and bottom of my cart? What if I It really does? It freaks me out, because I don’t have any attention to stealing when I go up there, so I’m like, Hmm, you know, I’m very careful, but still, sometimes you’d be very careful. Like, maybe you put your purse on top of a very small item.
Jackie Critzer 6:47
Oh, sure.
Scott Cardani 6:48
You didn’t lift it up and didn’t think about it, you know. Like, or your kid threw something in the car you didn’t see, you know. And it’s just a scary proposition for me.
Jackie Critzer 6:57
It’s interesting that you point that out, because I have with my kids in tow, gone to the grocery store, run the cart through the register and then paid and out the door, we go and into the car go all the groceries. And that exact scenario has happened where I find a thing that I know I didn’t hand over to the cash register, or I know I didn’t give to the cashier or run through the register. The very first thing I do is take that item and my receipt and my wallet and my children with me back inside. I would have never been caught, right? Nobody was coming after me. They weren’t. They weren’t calling the police. But my integrity is not for sale. I didn’t get one over on the store, right? This is, this is so important in how we model behaviors for our children, because the flip side of that right, let’s, let’s look at what would have happened had I sent, oh, well, no big deal. They didn’t catch us. Let’s just go. What message am I modeling for my children?
Scott Cardani 7:54
What a good concept. I mean, it is true, man, we don’t think about those things and like, you know, and there’s a lot of times where people make mistakes and, you know, the day it was in the store, there was $1 on the floor, and I gave it to the register lady, and she’s like, it’s $1 I don’t think anybody’s missing it. And I know I said, but maybe somebody is, maybe that’s their last dollar.
Jackie Critzer 8:13
You know, I was at the Walmart out by my house. This has been a few months ago, and I had one of, one of our teenagers with us, with me, and I went to a self checkout. It was one of the newer ones. And you know, the cash return where, like, if you put in 20 bucks and you get some change back, there was money just sitting there. And I just kind of looked around, and I took the money. It was $16 not a huge amount of money, but it wasn’t my $16. It didn’t belong to me, and so I found the closest person, and I said, Hey, I don’t know if somebody’s gonna come back for this. I just want you to know that this money, maybe he pocketed it. That’s on him. It’s not on me. But again, I’m modeling this behavior for these for my children and other people. But I do have a question, what happens? What if I kept that money? Is that a crime?
Scott Cardani 9:02
I would say it’s abandoned. I could go down a road with that, but, you know…
Jackie Critzer 9:05
That’s not really what we’re talking about. But yeah.
Scott Cardani 9:08
I mean, I get what you’re saying, but again, we want to model it good integrity. The other kind of shop within happens a lot that I see is, um, clothing stores. You go in a clothing store, you have something on, and you just put stuff underneath your clothes and try to walk out. That happens all the time.
Jackie Critzer 9:23
It’s a crime.
Scott Cardani 9:24
It’s a crime. It’s called shoplifting. Your juvenile needs to be told, Hey, you can’t do this. And again, a lot of kids do stealing for the thrill of the chase. I don’t know what it is. There’s something to it that gets really weird, and there’s this high sort of that they get for stealing. But you know, this affects college applications, jobs. Stealing is one of those crimes that’s…
Jackie Critzer 9:47
It’s a moral turpitude.
Scott Cardani 9:49
Oh, there it is, the moral turpitude crime. So it’s the one that everybody asked about. Have you ever been caught up lying, cheating or stealing?
Jackie Critzer 9:56
Well, why does that matter? What does a crime of moral turpitude matter? Or, versus speeding or…
Scott Cardani 10:02
Well, you tell me if we’re hiring somebody at Critzer Cardani to answer the phones, we have somebody comes in and has a reckless driving and a stealing charge. Who we gonna hire?
Jackie Critzer 10:12
Well – I can tell you who I’m not gonna hire. I’m not gonna hire the person who’s been convicted of a crime of moral turpitude, for a lot of reasons, but not the least of which is, but they’re going to be dealing with our clients. They’re going to be dealing with cash money. And most places, if you’re at a bank, if you’re at a store, if you are dealing with cash money at all, and you have a stealing conviction on your record, you’re not likely to last long. But that brings me to my next question, is it different for a juvenile or a person under the age of 18, when they are caught stealing and charged with shoplifting, are the consequences the same or different as 18 and over?
Scott Cardani 10:53
It’s the exact same crime. Remember, in Virginia, it’s called, if you’re under 18, it’s a crime that would be a misdemeanor or a felony if you were an adult. But that kind of thing is kind of rolled a lot, played out a little bit, but still, I still believe that, so use that, but most of the time it’s a first offense on both sides of the coin. You’re going to get a chance to rehabilitate, so to speak. And maybe have this off your record, juveniles are much softer treated, I would say, than adults, you know, but that kind of plays into it, the circumstances of what happened, why it happened, all those kind of things.
Jackie Critzer 11:25
Well, there are some non judicial system consequences when you are found guilty of stealing as well, right? Like you are banned from…
Scott Cardani 11:35
Oh Yeah.
Jackie Critzer 11:35
Usually, I’ve seen these cases where it’s not you’re banned from that Target. You’re banned from all Targets everywhere.
Scott Cardani 11:41
Yeah, usually the corporate stores ask you to ban from all. And you know, do they have facial recognition software when they’re walking in the door? Probably, are they going to catch you if you’re in Tennessee going into Target? Probably not. But it’s not worth it.
Jackie Critzer 11:54
It’s not worth it. It does hover. What about this? If you’ve got a crime on your juvenile record, you stole a candy bar from 711 or you went to Wawa and you ordered a sandwich and you left without paying for it. Still shoplifting. Does that stay? Is that something that when you’re older, somebody could find on your record?
Scott Cardani 12:17
Yeah – it just depends anymore. I mean, I would say Technically, yes, but juvenile records are supposed to be destroyed every five years, all these kind of things. So you know, it depends how old you are when it happens. It depends on the circumstances, and pretty much, with the new advent of the Internet and where AI is and all that, they can find anything. So I would say, once you get busted, you’re busted, and it’s going to be there, but I don’t think most people care what you did when you’re 12 years old.
Jackie Critzer 12:43
So first things, first, What To Do When… Shoplifting is your Jam. I mean, let’s make it not your jam. Let’s, let’s stop with the shoplifting. Okay? Let’s, let’s get away from that. But then shut your mouth, right? You have the right to remain silent. Use that right, execute that right.
Scott Cardani 12:58
And again, this is not about you lying? This is about exercising your constitutional right not to incriminate yourself and not get yourself in more trouble than you might already be in. So. You know, let’s use the phrase. There’s a couple phrases with all due respect, officer, shoplifter, person, I’m not going to answer that question at this time. You know, on advice of counsel. I’m not gonna answer that question. Something like that. Just be polite. You don’t want to get in this thing where you’ve been rude. I don’t have to answer anything, you know. Just be polite with all due respect. I’m not gonna answer that. Thanks,
Jackie Critzer 13:30
Right. And then call an attorney, call an attorney, call somebody on the phone who can help you. And not you know, you know, we say it a lot, but you don’t need a business formation attorney to handle your shoplifting. You need a criminal defense attorney to handle your shoplifting. And if you have a juvenile, you’ve got a young person in your home, a teenager who’s been accused of shoplifting, you really ought to find somebody like Scott or even Will here in our office at Critzer Cardani that focuses on juvenile criminal defense. It is handled differently. The court process is a little bit different, and sometimes the consequences can be worked out a little differently when you’re dealing in the juvenile court world versus in in the adult court world.
Scott Cardani 14:13
And just remember, everybody will say, just tell me what happened and you’ll be okay for you. That’s not That’s not good advice. So anyways, we sound we love this topic. We love to help you all your juvenile, your adult. We you know, people make mistakes, and I do think sometimes impulse control can be a tricky thing. For some people, you end up doing something stupid. You’re like, what did I just do? There was no reason to do that. Come to us. Let us get your help. Let’s get you pointed in the right direction. You know, all courts handle these differently. There’s some kinds you can do stuff prior, like some community service. Sometimes you can’t. You just need to know those rules of the road and try to figure that out so you can have the best result possible, which is the best result is to keep it off your record.
Jackie Critzer 14:55
Thanks for watching and listening today. Like and Subscribe.
Scott Cardani 14:58
Thank you. Have a good day.
What To Do When… Outro 15:00
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