Fraud is the intentional deception or misrepresentation of the truth with the intent to deprive another person of something that belongs to him or to cause him injury in some other way. Today’s world provides lots of opportunities for fraud, such as credit card fraud, cell phone fraud, health care fraud, insurance fraud, securities and investment fraud, and telemarketing fraud.

Credit card fraud, for example, generally involves the illegal counterfeiting of credit cards and/or the illegal use of lost or stolen credit cards. Use of the Internet has become a key component in credit card fraud, due to the lists of stolen credit card numbers that are often posted or sold to enable violators to purchase goods online.

The field of fraud, as you can imagine, is getting more and more complex. Consider this one passage from language dealing with credit card field in the California Penal Code: “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 of access cards, with the intent that it be used or with knowledge or reason to believe that it will be used to avoid the payment of any lawful charge, or with intent to defraud or aid another in defrauding, is guilty of a misdemeanor.”

Another form of fraud is forgery, which – as paraphrased from California Penal Code section § 470 – is the intent to defraud by signing the name of another person, even a fictitious person, to a check or money order or identification card issued by a government agency (a driver’s license, for example). Forgery also includes writing a bad check.

Given the growing complexity of this field, and because fraud charges can be filed as misdemeanors or felonies, it’s important that you have the experienced representation available through the Law Office of Ronald G. Brower.