USING ANOTHER’S CREDIT CARD ACCOUNT NUMBER TO MAKE PURCHASES, WITHOUT PHYSICAL POSSESSION OF THE CARD, SUPPORTS A GRAND LARCENY CONVICTION (CT APP).
The Court of Appeals, in a full-fledged opinion by Judge DiFiore, over a two-judge dissent, determined that using a credit card number without physically possessing the credit card itself supported the grand larceny conviction:
The primary question presented by this appeal is whether the definition of credit card for purposes of Penal Law § 155.00 (7) includes the credit card account number, such that the People need not prove that a defendant physically possessed the tangible credit card in order to support a conviction of grand larceny based upon credit card theft. Here, defendant’s conviction of grand larceny in the fourth degree was based on defendant’s theft of the victim’s credit card account number to purchase goods, although there was no evidence that defendant possessed the physical card itself. We conclude that the definition of credit card in General Business Law § 511 (1), as supplemented by General Business Law § 511-a, is the controlling definition as designated by Penal Law § 155.00 (7) and, as a result, the evidence is legally sufficient to support defendant’s conviction of grand larceny for stealing an intangible credit card account number. People v Badji, 2021 NY Slip Op 00897, CtApp 2-11-21