California Business and Professions Code 7158 – (a) Any person who shall accept or receive a completion …
(a) Any person who shall accept or receive a completion certificate or other evidence that performance of a contract for a work of improvement, including, but not limited to, a home improvement, is complete or satisfactorily concluded, with knowledge that the document is false and that the performance is not substantially completed, and who shall utter, offer, or use the document in connection with the making or accepting of any assignment or negotiation of the right to receive any payment from the owner, under or in connection with a contract, or for the purpose of obtaining or granting any credit or loan on the security of the right to receive any payment shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and subject to a fine of not less than five hundred dollars ($500) nor more than five thousand dollars ($5,000), or to imprisonment in the county jail for a term of not less than one month nor more than one year, or both.
(b) (1) Any person who violates this section as part of a plan or scheme to defraud an owner of a residential or nonresidential structure, including a mobilehome or manufactured home, in connection with the offer or performance of repairs to the structure for damage caused by a natural disaster, shall be ordered by the court to make full restitution to the victim based on the person’s ability to pay, defined as the overall capability of the defendant to reimburse the costs, or a portion of the costs, including consideration of, but not limited to, all of the following:
Terms Used In California Business and Professions Code 7158
- Contract: A legal written agreement that becomes binding when signed.
- County: includes city and county. See California Business and Professions Code 17
- Defendant: In a civil suit, the person complained against; in a criminal case, the person accused of the crime.
- Evidence: Information presented in testimony or in documents that is used to persuade the fact finder (judge or jury) to decide the case for one side or the other.
- Person: as used in this article is limited to natural persons, notwithstanding the definition of person in Section 7025. See California Business and Professions Code 7150
- Restitution: The court-ordered payment of money by the defendant to the victim for damages caused by the criminal action.
- State: means the State of California, unless applied to the different parts of the United States. See California Business and Professions Code 21
- Subdivision: means a subdivision of the section in which that term occurs, unless some other section is expressly mentioned. See California Business and Professions Code 15
(A) The defendant’s present financial position.
(B) The defendant’s reasonably discernible future financial position, provided that the court shall not consider a period of more than one year from the date of the hearing for purposes of determining the reasonably discernible future financial position of the defendant.
(C) The likelihood that the defendant will be able to obtain employment within one year from the date of the hearing.
(D) Any other factor that may bear upon the defendant’s financial capability to reimburse the county for costs.
(2) In addition to full restitution, and imprisonment authorized by subdivision (a), the court may impose a fine of not less than five hundred dollars ($500) nor more than twenty-five thousand dollars ($25,000), based upon the defendant’s ability to pay. This subdivision applies to natural disasters for which a state of emergency is proclaimed by the Governor pursuant to § 8625 of the Government Code or for which an emergency or major disaster is declared by the President of the United States.
(c) This section shall become operative on July 1, 2021.
(Repealed (in Sec. 3) and added by Stats. 2020, Ch. 92, Sec. 4. (AB 1869) Effective September 18, 2020. Operative July 1, 2021, by its own provisions.)