## Facts

- Keyshawn Jones worked as a truck driver and requested a $1,200 payment from his employer’s payroll management account.
- The employer’s payroll processor mistakenly entered the payment as $120,000 rather than $1,200.
- After deductions, $118,729.49 was deposited into Jones’s bank account.
- The payroll processor discovered the error the next morning, contacted Jones, told him not to withdraw any money, and attempted to reverse the deposit.
- The attempted reversal failed because Jones had already withdrawn almost all of the funds from his account.
- Jones was charged with larceny, tried before a jury, and found guilty.
- Jones appealed, and the North Carolina Court of Appeals reversed the conviction on the ground that Jones had not committed a trespassory taking.
- The State sought discretionary review, which the North Carolina Supreme Court allowed.

## Issues

1. Whether a defendant commits larceny when, after receiving a mistaken payroll overpayment deposited into his bank account, he withdraws the funds with knowledge of the mistake and an intent to keep the money.

## Decision

- The North Carolina Supreme Court reversed the Court of Appeals.
- The court held that the evidence permitted a finding that Jones committed larceny, including the “taking” element, when he withdrew the mistakenly deposited funds with knowledge they were not his and with intent to permanently deprive the owner of them.
- The case was remanded for further proceedings consistent with the Supreme Court’s decision (thereby leaving the jury’s larceny verdict intact rather than set aside on the “no trespass” theory adopted by the Court of Appeals).

## Legal Principles

- Common-law larceny requires: (1) taking and carrying away (2) the personal property of another (3) without consent and (4) with intent to permanently deprive the owner of the property.
- A “taking” is trespassory when the defendant obtains possession without the owner’s consent; apparent consent that exists only because of a mistake does not defeat larceny where the defendant knows of the mistake and acts to appropriate the property.
- In mistaken-transfer situations, the timing of the defendant’s knowledge and intent matters: if the defendant knows at the time he exercises dominion over the property that it was transferred by mistake and intends to keep it, the taking element may be satisfied.
- With money deposited by mistake, a jury may find a trespassory taking when the defendant withdraws and carries away funds that the defendant knows were not rightfully his and that he knows the true owner did not mean to transfer as a gift or payment.

## Conclusion

State v. Jones holds that a mistaken payroll overpayment deposited into a defendant’s bank account can support a larceny conviction when the defendant, knowing the deposit was an error, withdraws the money intending to keep it; the North Carolina Supreme Court therefore rejected the Court of Appeals’ “no trespassory taking” rationale and reversed its decision.


State v. Jones, 800 S.E.2d 54 (2017)