One thing some thieves learn early in their career is that their friends often make the best fences or provide the best storage facilities. This is how enabling your harmless shoplifter buddy can turn a good, mall-shopping, lotto-playing American like you into a criminal.
If this were a college course, I’d call it “Intro to Practical Consideration of Perspectives on Receiving Stolen Property.” I’d slot it at a convenient time, just after the cafeteria serves those fresh cinnamon buns, but not early enough to make you night owls compromise your beauty rest. I’d forego a final exam, pending student participation. I woulda made a helluva professor—motivation and enthusiasm and showmanship for days. But that’s another book entirely.
All this to say, handling a sticky legal situation is often as much about the point of view you approach it with as it is about the alleged crime itself. Having a blue-shirted brigade come knocking on your door with a wake-up warrant for theft is serious business, but what if your perspective all along is, “Hey, man—of course this isn’t my stuff”? Sometimes your smartest move is playing dumb. You want to be an accessory? Romance a dowager countess and while away your days comfortably in the south of France sipping champagne like all good arm candy.
I’ll give a hypothetical to make things clear: let’s say your good buddy White Dice pulls up to your house with a van full of electronic gear and instruments. A complete rock band setup.
“Wow,” you think, “old Dice is tone-deaf! Not to mention, he lost half a finger in a smelting accident a few years back! Why is he starting a band?”
White Dice asks if he can store the stuff in your garage until he gets a chance to set up a rehearsal space, and you say yes, because Andrea Bocelli was no spring chicken when he got his big break—who’s to say it’s too late for your pal to drop the heavy machinery and take up a career in heavy metal?
Plus, White Dice has had some rough times lately, so at the very least it’s good for him to have a hobby. Maybe he’s learning to drum? He can definitely hold a pair of sticks, and they don’t need to be able to differentiate musical notes as long as they can keep up with the tempo, right? Maybe this will lead to something! You should probably start making T-shirts and prepping a tour bus now.
While you’re getting lost in the possibilities, White Dice drives off. A few mornings later, the doorbell rings and it isn’t the Dice Man! It’s a theft and fraud detective, maybe a pair of them, and they want to talk to you about your friend.
Sitting in your garage is gear owned by—I don’t know—The Bonky Honky Tonky or somebody like that. Biggest three-piece band in the southwest. In the county. Or maybe they’re just the biggest garage band at Turkey Hill Middle School. It doesn’t matter, what’s important is that you’ve received stolen property.
The sunny-side up version of what might happen next is: you say you didn’t know the stuff was stolen, and when the detectives nab White Dice, he corroborates your story and admits you didn’t know. And that’s that—you’re good to go. I mean, it won’t be quite that simple, of course, but it might be pretty close.
Now, let’s be pessimistic. We need to imagine worst-case scenarios because knowing just how badly things can go wrong is how you develop a contingency plan. Sure, there will probably be blue skies and puffy clouds on the day a hundred of your friends and fam show up for your Independence Day dream wedding. But don’t end up cursing your stars—rent that expensive gazebo canopy in case a freak July blizzard turns your beachy vows into a blustery marital botch. So what’s the summer snowstorm scenario got to do with the liberated instruments stacked between your lawn mower and those six boxes of term papers in your garage?
Look: it’s not illegal to be the person who gets saddled with stolen goods if you didn’t know they were stolen.
However, let’s say you decide to make a statement and it goes a little like this: “Honest, officers, I did not know that White Dice was creeping around the BHT at the Git-Fiddle Ho-down Show. I didn’t know he’d stolen anything. I promise, I thought he was starting a band, or taking an interest in equipment repair.” (I’m assuming that you are quick enough on your feet to not mention knowing our hypothetical pal totally has a tin ear.)
Prosecutors could say White Dice went to the venue to steal that equipment. That was his intent all along. He knew he could do it and then hide the gear because he had a buddy—that’s you—who was willing to provide the storage space.
To make things worse: if they question enough people, they might find out White Dice is tone-deaf anyway. As his friend, they’ll take the big leap of assuming you knew this. Hopefully you can see where I’m headed here. Now you’re on the hook for felony accessory to theft charges, when your only real crime was having a garage. And being a supportive friend.
So: where did things go wrong? Should you cut ties with your friends and family, put up a big fence and train a guard dog to chase off everyone but the postwoman? No, it wasn’t doing a favor for your friend that got you into trouble; it was giving that statement to the police.
Sometimes even what feels like the most straightforward, innocent statement can and will be used against you in a court of law. That’s why I want to put into your brain a Mormon Tabernacle Choir of Saul Goodmans singing “MAKE NO STATEMENTS” to the tune of the “Hallelujah Chorus.”
As soon as the notion “the cops want to talk to me about a thing and they might think I’m involved” flits like a butterfly between your ears—ask for a lawyer. They’ll make sure you don’t say anything that might make you sound complicit in illegal activities.
And this should be clear, but just in case: it’s best to never knowingly deal with stolen goods. If you do knowingly deal with them, I’d guess you’re making some money at it. And if you are putting away some sweet tax-free coin flipping ill-gotten goods snatched from touring rock band trailers—put a criminal defense attorney on retainer, Robin Hood. You’ll need one.
Now that we’ve cleared your name from second-hand involvement in those hypothetical crimes committed by other people, let’s imagine what might happen if you find yourself tempted to take a five-finger discount on an especially seductive jar of exfoliating sugar scrub.
Ah, the venerable pastime of shoplifting. If we traveled back in time to markets in ancient cities whose names now only appear in Julius Caesar’s memoirs, we would be able to spot someone with a slightly oversized toga slipping between the stalls and grabbing goods real fast and quiet, never paying a single drachma.
There are a few crimes that folks who’d never even dare to jaywalk can understand, and I think shoplifting’s one of them. That doesn’t mean it’s excusable in the eyes of the law, but it does mean some shoplifters aren’t thieves seeking a thrill or resellers scoring new stock—they’re honest citizens clinging to the final frayed ends of their ropes. It’s just too damned easy sometimes to walk into even the most minor retail establishment, check the dusty wasteland of your wallet, and realize just how much you suddenly covet and need some of that stuff around you. Slim Jims never looked so tasty as when you couldn’t even muster the measly $2.99 to buy them.