Legal Question in Criminal Law in California

Re: No criminal history

If your employer did not report your crime to the police then there is no police record for a prosecutor to find. However, she might find out about it in other ways.

The most likely source of this information would be from EDD, the state agency which handles unemployment claims. If you filed an unemployment claim you had to provide a reason for your dismissal. EDD then would have called your employer and see if it disputed your explanation. Your boss's promise not to report the theft to the police would not prevent him from reporting it to EDD, so they may have a record of it.

It is also possible that the prosecutor would investigate your background, and this investigation could include a conversation with your old boss about the reasons for your departure.

Such background checks are not standard procedure in cases involving minor crimes, but the more serious the charges are the more thorough the prosecutor will be.

I also want to add that your boss's threat to report the crime unless you reimbursed the company may well have been illegal. Since you don't want to call attention to this theft there is probably no point in making an issue of it, but I want future readers of this answer to know that they can't freely make such threats even when they have been the victim of a crime.

Re: No criminal history

The incident to which you refer was not investigated, and would not be investigated unless the employer requested an investigation. The statute of limitations on a felony theft is 3 years from the date of discovery. There would seem to be little cause for you to be concerned.

Re: No criminal history

I want to add a point to the answer I posted yesterday.

If you are charged with another crime, it is very unlikely that the prior theft can be used against you in court because the law generally does not allow prosecutors to use evidence of an old crime to prove that you committed a new one. This rule exists because evidence of prior crimes might lead juries to convict defendants they consider bad people and not to give appropriate weight to the evidence of the new offense.

However, the prior crime can be used to prove some other issue. For example, if you are accused of a crime very similar to the theft, the prosecution may be able to argue that the new theft was carried out just like the old one and that this fact suggests the same person committed both. This way the evidence would be offered to prove the identity of the thief and not merely to show that you have a history of breaking the law.