People v. Ingram
California Court of Appeal for the Fourth District
76 Cal. Rptr. 2d 553 (1998)
After removing a pants tag and taking the item to a Nordstrom Rack refund counter, Thomas Ingram (defendant) falsely told a clerk he'd received the pants as a gift but they were the wrong size; a loss-prevention agent, who had already observed Ingram's scheme, instructed the clerk in advance to accept the return and process the refund, which the clerk did, giving Ingram cash before he was stopped by store security while leaving. Ingram was charged with petty theft with a prior conviction, and after the prosecution rested, the trial court agreed a false-pretenses theory failed for lack of reliance but denied acquittal based on an alternative larceny theory (that Ingram intended to steal the pants outright if refused a refund), and a jury convicted him, sentencing him to 25 years to life under the three-strikes law; he appealed.
Whether a defendant can be convicted of theft by false pretenses, or alternatively of larceny, when store employees discovered his scheme in advance and knowingly processed the transaction anyway, meaning they never actually relied on his misrepresentation.