WEST VIRGINIA LEGISLATURE

2025 REGULAR SESSION

Introduced

House Bill 2211

By Delegate Steele

[Introduced ; referred
to the Committee on ]

A BILL to amend and reenact §61-3C-13 of the West Virginia Code, 1931, as amended, to proscribe a new penalty that is subject to the value limitations, and to provide for calculation of the value of the criminal act in determining the appropriate sentence.  

Be it enacted by the Legislature of West Virginia:

 

article 3c. west virginia computer crime and abuse act. §61-3C-13. Fraud and related activity in connection with accessdevices.

(a) As used in this section, the following terms shall have the following meanings:

"Accessdevice" means any card, plate, code, account number, or other means of account access that can be used, alone or in conjunction with another accessdevice, to obtain money, goods, services, or any other thing of value, or that can be used to initiate a transfer of funds (other than a transfer originated solely by paper instrument);

"Counterfeit accessdevice" means any accessdevice that is counterfeit, fictitious, altered, or forged, or an identifiable component of an accessdevice or a counterfeit accessdevice;

"Unauthorized accessdevice" means any accessdevice that is lost, stolen, expired, revoked, canceled, or obtained without authority;

"Produce" includes design, alter, authenticate, duplicate, or assemble;

"Traffic" means transfer, or otherwise dispose of, to another, or obtain control of with intent to transfer or dispose of.

(b) Any person who knowingly and willfully possesses any counterfeit or unauthorized accessdeviceshall beis guilty of a misdemeanor, and, upon conviction thereof, shall be fined not more than $1000 or confined in the county jail for not more than six months, or both fined and confined.

(c) Any person who knowingly, willfully and with intent to defraud possesses a counterfeit or unauthorized accessdevice or who knowingly, willfully and with intent to defraud, uses, produces or traffics in any counterfeit or unauthorized accessdeviceshall beis guilty of a felonylarceny.and, upon conviction thereof, shall be fined not more than ten thousand dollars or imprisoned in the penitentiary for not more than ten years, or bothFor purposes of this section, the value of the use of the access device, whether counterfeit or unauthorized, shall be calculated in the aggregate rather than for each individual use of the access device. Upon conviction thereof, and a finding of the aggregate value of the use of the access device, the defendant shall be sentenced in accordance with §61-3-13, as the subsections thereof apply to the value of the larceny.

(d) In determining the aggregate value, the value of all transactions from the use of multiple access devices attributed to a single victim, whether they are counterfeit or unauthorized, shall be used to determine the total value of the larceny.

(d)(e) This section shallmay not prohibit any lawfully authorized investigative or protective activity of any state, county or municipal law-enforcement agency.

NOTE: The purpose of this bill is to proscribe a new penalty that is subject to the value limitations of W. Va. Code §61-3-13, that the sentence provided for in subsection (c) be amended to become the exact same sentence for a violation of W. Va. Code §61-3-13, and to provide for calculation of the value of the criminal act in determining the appropriate sentence.

Strike-throughs indicate language that would be stricken from a heading or the present law and underscoring indicates new language that would be added.