Law-Forums.org

[doran]

its florida law,

832.041 Stopping payment with intent to defraud.--

(1) Whoever, with intent to defraud any person shall, in person or by agent, make, draw, utter, deliver, or give any check, draft, or written order for the payment of money upon any bank, person, or corporation and secure from such person goods or services for or on account of such check, draft, or written order, whether such goods or services are valued at the amount of such check, draft, or written order or at a greater or lesser value, and who shall, pursuant to and in furtherance of such intent to defraud, stop payment on such check, draft, or written order, shall be deemed to be guilty of a felony of the third degree, punishable as provided in s. 775.082, s. 775.083, or s. 775.084, if the value of the goods or services secured for or on account of such check, draft, or written order is $150 or more; and if the value of the goods or services secured for or on account of such check, draft, or written order is less than $150, he or she shall be guilty of a misdemeanor of the second degree, punishable as provided in s. 775.082 or s. 775.083.

(2) This section shall be taken to be cumulative and shall not be construed to repeal any other statute now in effect.

History.--ss. 1, 2, ch. 65-413; s. 980, ch. 71-136; s. 8, ch. 86-161; s. 1302, ch. 97-102.

so basically it says, if u write a check for 150 or more and its bad/fraud or stopepd payment, u can get 15 years?

[plys]

If you stop payment because you intended to defraud the person you gave it to, that is get the items, write a check you will never permit to get to the bank because you are going to stop payment, and then stop payment, that is a felony if the amount was $150 or over and a misdemeanor if it is under $150. Your intent was to defraud.

This has nothing to do with doing this inadvertently, not having enough money in the account, having it bounce, etc.

Your site says could, might. I doubt that if this happened by accident or you are not guilty and prove it, there will be any real penalty. If you do it on purpose and more than one check, that will be looked upon much more seriously. I still doubt you will be sent to prison for 15 years for a first offense.

You would have to either declare you are guilty or go to trial. The punishment would be whatever the law says it is with whatever the jury says you are guilty of. There isn't enough information here for me to determine if there is a set 15 years for any and all occurrences. I sincerely doubt it.

Whatever the penalty, this is breaking the law and essentially stealing from the person who gave you the goods. Not a nice thing to do.

[chason62]

Yes, unless you can prove to the judge that you thought the check would clear(remember it says "have reasonable knowledge will not clear the bank") So if you can convince the judge that you believed it would clear then you will face a lesser charge, or maybe no charge at all if you pay it(I don't know).

However stopping payment on a check is clearly fraud unless you can come up with a real good reason for why it was done.(example: You paid 200 bucks to have a new part installed on your A/C because they told you it failed and in the bill it says the part was new, but when you looked at it, it was clearly the same part as was on it before). Of course if you do this you should be on the phone filing charges against them for fraud.

But you never get more than probation(usually unsupervised) for a year and a small fine, court costs and restitution(paying back the check and "bounced check" fees) the first time. The long jail time listed as the max is there for people who try and make a career out of it, not people who screw up every once in awhile.