Opinion
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED
APPEAL from a judgment of the Superior Court of Kings County Nos. 07CM2503 and 07CM3710, Peter M. Schultz, Judge.
Roshni Mehta, under appointment by the Court of Appeal, for Defendant and Appellant.
Edmund G. Brown, Jr., Attorney General, Michael P. Farrell, Senior Assistant Attorney General, and Louis M. Vasquez, Deputy Attorney General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.
OPINION
Before Levy, Acting P.J.; Cornell, J.; and Gomes, J.
Appellant, Crystal Marie Dennis, stole a cell phone from her employer, Kate Catalina, and made phone calls without Catalina’s consent. Thereafter, appellant accessed Catalina’s direct debit information to pay for the charges. The phone company relieved Catalina of any financial obligation because the cell phone had been stolen. Thus, Catalina did not suffer an economic loss. However, the phone company incurred a loss of $1,271.55 as a result of appellant’s actions.
Appellant was convicted on her guilty plea to one count of felony grand theft of personal property worth over $400. (Pen. Code, § 487, subd. (a).) At sentencing, the trial court ordered direct restitution to the phone company in the amount of its loss.
All further statutory references are to the Penal Code.
Appellant argues she received an unauthorized sentence. According to appellant, the phone company is not a direct victim and therefore it is not entitled to restitution.
Contrary to appellant’s position, the phone company is a direct victim, i.e., an object of the offense, because appellant used the phone company’s network to make calls for which the phone company was not compensated. Therefore, the victim restitution order was proper.
DISCUSSION
Section 1202.4 requires a defendant to pay restitution directly to a victim who suffers any economic loss as a result of the defendant’s conduct. (§ 1202.4, subds. (a)(1) and (f).) “Victim” includes “[a]ny corporation … or any other legal or commercial entity when that entity is a direct victim of a crime.” (§ 1202.4, subd. (k)(2).)
In the context of entities, direct victims have been defined as entities against which the crimes have been committed, i.e., entities that are the “immediate objects” of the offenses. (People v. Martinez (2005) 36 Cal.4th 384, 393.) In this context, the California Supreme Court has defined “direct” as “‘straightforward, uninterrupted, [or] immediate’ in time, order or succession, or ‘proceeding [in logic] from antecedent to consequent, from cause to effect, etc., uninterrupted,’ or generally ‘[e]ffected or existing without intermediation or intervening agency; immediate.’ [Citation.]” (People v. Birkett (1999) 21 Cal.4th 226, 232-233, fn. 6.)
Employing this definition of “direct victim,” the Supreme Court held that an insurer who indemnifies a car theft loss is not a direct victim of that car theft. (People v. Birkett, supra, 21 Cal.4th at pp. 245-247.) Similarly, the court held that when California’s Department of Toxic Substances Control incurs costs in cleaning up waste material from a defendant’s attempt to manufacture methamphetamine, the agency is not a direct victim of the defendant’s criminal conduct. (People v. Martinez, supra, 36 Cal.4th at pp. 393-394.) Also, a police department is not a direct victim when it incurs economic losses in the course of a criminal investigation and a hospital is not a direct victim when it incurs losses for the treatment of a victim who was injured by a defendant’s criminal conduct. (People v. Slattery (2008) 167 Cal.App.4th 1091, 1096-1097.)
On the other hand, insurance companies that are victims of insurance fraud are entitled to restitution as direct victims. In such cases, the defendant’s fraud induces the company to make direct payments to the defendant or to settle false claims. (People v. Saint-Amans (2005) 131 Cal.App.4th 1076, 1085.) Further, a bank that covers the cost of forged checks or fraudulent withdrawals is a direct victim. (People v. Bartell (2009) 170 Cal.App.4th 1258, 1262; People v. Saint-Amans, supra, 131 Cal.App.4th at pp. 1084-1087.) The bank is the object of these crimes because it is the bank’s money the defendant is taking. (People v. Bartell, supra, 170 Cal.App.4th at p. 1262.)
The phone company’s situation in this case is analogous to a bank covering forged checks or fraudulent withdrawals. By using a stolen cell phone to make unauthorized calls, appellant caused direct loss to the phone company. The phone company was not an indirect victim, i.e., it did not merely assist in remediating the effects of the crime. (Cf. People v. Bartell, supra, 170 Cal.App.4th at p. 1262.) Rather, the phone company was the object of the offense. Accordingly, the victim restitution order was proper.
DISPOSITION
The judgment is affirmed.