Grand Theft Over $100,000, Prison, Fire Camp, Expungement

In 2012, in the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Courts Building (CCB), our client was convicted of violating Penal Code § 487(a) and the jury found true the sentence enhancement allegation under Penal Code § 186.11(a)(5) that the amount at issue was in excess of $100,000.  The jury also convicted our client of filing a false tax return under Penal Code § 19705(a). 

The conviction arose over a broken promise.  Our client had worked for a small printing company owned by his in-laws for over ten years and then arranged an extremely advantageous buyout of the company by a larger company.  The buyout netted the owners millions of dollars and the owners promised our client at one percent equity share in the new business for his extraordinary efforts.

 

However, the owners never made good on their promise despite continually making this promise and repeatedly assuring him that they would make good on their promise.

Weeks and then months passed.  Finally, our client began diverting online payments to the printing company to his own personal account and was caught.

A restitution hearing in the case was held after our client’s convictions and the judge found that our client owed approximately $466,000 to the victim, as well as approximately $98,000 to the Franchise Tax Board.

The judge then sentenced our client to 4 years in state prison.

Once the client was in prison, he was transferred from Delano State Prison to his destination prison, where he was recommended for fire camp and then served approximately one year at Growlersburg Camp.  

Our client served a total of approximately seventeen months in prison before being released and placed on parole in 2013.

The client paid nothing toward restitution or to the Franchise Tax Board because he simply could not afford to make any payments.  

Once he was out of prison, he had difficulty finding a job with a felony record for grand theft and nonpayment of taxes.

In 2023, however, he learned about two new laws that would change his life.  First, he learned about Assembly Bill (AB) 2147, which permitted a person who successfully served time in fire camp to request expungement of the conviction(s) that this sentence was based upon that led to fire camp.  AB 2147 was then codified at Penal Code § 1204.4b(a).

Second, he learned about Assembly Bill 1803, which prohibited a judge from denying expungement to a petition based on petitioner’s failure to pay restitution in full.  This new law was codified at Penal Code §§ 1203.426 and 1203.427.

The client then called up Greg Hill & Associates about whether he could get his grand theft and failure to pay taxes convictions expunged.  The client explained the basic facts of the case, as summarized above, and Greg responded that yes, this could be accomplished.

Greg also explained how expungement differed from sealing and how, despite expungement being granted, one still had to disclose the conviction in four situations: if running for public office, if applying for certain state-issued licenses, if applying to operate a state-operated lottery, or if applying for any type of government job.

The client then retained Greg Hill & Associates and our office then prepared, filed and served the petition for dismissal (“expungement”) under Penal Code § 1203.4b(a) with a discussion of the new law and addressing the unpaid restitution.

After five appearances at the Clara Shortridge Foltz criminal courts building (CCB), the petition was granted with no objection by the People.  The matter was set for successive hearings because at each hearing, the court clerk would report that the CDCR had not yet submitted a Certificate of Successful Fire Camp Completion for our client, so each time this happened, we would reset the hearing for four to six weeks later to give the CDCR more time to submit the certificated.

When the client finally received word of the petition’s success, he was very happy, knowing he could again get back on his feet financially.