The People v. Eugene CA2/7

DISCUSSION

I. Challenges to Convictions

Based on People v. Bailey (1961) 55 Cal.2d 514 (Bailey) and its progeny, Eugene argues that he could only be convicted of a single count of grand theft because the evidence established an ongoing scheme to commit fraud that involved a single victim, a single, continuous course of conduct, and a single criminal objective: he was the mastermind of an ongoing child care fraud scheme involving falsified attendance and employment records in order to obtain payments for subsidized child care to which he was not entitled. Whether a person may suffer multiple grand theft convictions for multiple takings or whether the takings always constitute a single offense under Bailey is presently under consideration by the California Supreme Court in People v. Whitmer, review granted May 1, 2013, S208843. In Bailey, the California Supreme Court held that where as part of a single plan a defendant makes false representations and receives various sums, each of

3 which is an amount less than that required for a grand theft, these petty thefts may be aggregated to constitute one offense of grand theft. (Id. at pp. 518-520.) The Bailey court also stated that…