Nevada has no crime called shoplifting. A shoplifting arrest in Stateline is charged as petit larceny, as theft, or, on the State’s theory, as burglary of a business, which is a felony. The facts are often small: a jacket from a resort shop, chips picked up from a table, a phone left on a bar. The charge can still be a felony, because Nevada grades theft by dollar value and treats entering a building with intent to steal as a separate crime.
For most people charged with these offenses, the fine is not the problem. A theft conviction is a record that employers and licensing boards will read for years. And the retailer’s demand letter that arrives a few weeks after the arrest is a separate claim that does nothing to end the criminal case.
I’m Theodore FitzGerald, a criminal defense lawyer in Stateline. I work from one rule: the government has to follow the law at every step. In a theft case, that means the State has to prove intent and value, and on a burglary charge an unlawful entry, and I check every one.
What the State has to prove for theft
Nevada folded the old offenses of larceny, embezzlement, false pretenses, and receiving stolen property into a single crime called theft. A person commits theft if, without lawful authority, the person knowingly does one of a list of things. The ones that come up most often here:
- Controlling another person’s property with the intent to deprive that person of it. This is the ordinary taking.
- Obtaining property or services by a material misrepresentation, with intent to deprive. A material misrepresentation is a fraudulent pretense, promise, or statement that is “instrumental in causing the wrongful control or transfer,” and it “may be verbal or it may be a physical act.”
- Controlling property knowing or having reason to know it was stolen.
- Obtaining services known to be available only for pay, without paying.
The words “knowingly” and “intent to deprive” carry most of the defense. Picking up the wrong jacket, walking out of a store absent-mindedly with an unpaid item, or keeping something you honestly believed was yours is not theft, because the mental state is missing. The State proves intent from circumstances such as concealment, removed tags, or a side exit, and each of those inferences gets checked against the video.
Is shoplifting a felony in Nevada?
It depends on value. “Value” means “the fair market value of the property or services at the time of the theft.” The amount involved is “the highest value, by any reasonable standard” of what was obtained, and amounts from “a scheme or continuing course of conduct” may be added together to reach a higher grade.
| Value | Grade |
|---|---|
| Less than $1,200 | Misdemeanor: up to 6 months in county jail, fine up to $1,000 |
| $1,200 to less than $5,000 | Category D felony: 1–4 years, fine up to $5,000 |
| $5,000 to less than $25,000 | Category C felony: 1–5 years, fine up to $10,000 |
| $25,000 to less than $100,000 | Category B felony: 1–10 years, fine up to $10,000 |
| $100,000 or more | Category B felony: 1–20 years, fine up to $15,000 |
In every grade, “the court shall order the person who committed the theft to pay restitution.”
Valuation is a real issue. Retail price, sale price, used value, and what the item would bring on the market are different numbers. Aggregation is another: whether several takings were one “scheme or continuing course of conduct” is a question of fact, not something the State gets to assume.
Nevada also kept its older larceny statutes, and prosecutors use them. Petit larceny is intentionally stealing, taking, and carrying away property worth less than $1,200: a misdemeanor, with mandatory restitution. Grand larceny is the same conduct at $1,200 or more, graded on the same dollar tiers as theft.
Two other statutes reach retail theft specifically. Intentionally damaging a store’s property while committing a theft is a category C felony if the theft and the damage together reach $750. And a series of thefts from merchants, committed to return the goods for value or to resell them, is organized retail theft, a category B felony once the total over 120 days reaches $3,500.
Can a store or casino hold you until police arrive?
Within limits. A merchant who has reason to believe merchandise was wrongfully taken may detain the person “on the premises, in a reasonable manner and for a reasonable length of time,” to recover the merchandise or to notify a peace officer. A merchant who saw you conceal merchandise is presumed to have that reason. Casinos have a parallel statute: a gaming licensee with reasonable cause to believe a person committed a felony may detain the person in the establishment “solely for the purpose of notifying a peace officer.”
Neither statute makes store or casino security the police, and neither requires you to explain yourself. What you say to them is evidence, and they will repeat it in court.
Do I have to pay the retailer’s demand letter?
Weeks after an arrest, many people get a letter from a retailer or its collection firm demanding money. It rests on a Nevada statute that makes an adult who steals merchandise from a merchant’s premises “civilly liable for the retail value of the merchandise … plus damages of not less than $100 nor more than $250, costs of suit and reasonable attorney’s fees.” The merchant may sue “even if there has been no criminal conviction,” and may bring the claim in small claims court.
- The letter is a civil claim, separate from the criminal case. Nothing in the statute makes payment a defense to the prosecution, and the store does not decide whether the district attorney prosecutes.
- The statute sets what a merchant can recover: the merchandise’s retail value (or the fair market value of damaged property) plus $100 to $250 in damages. Costs and attorney’s fees come in only if the merchant actually sues. Compare any demand against that.
- If the merchandise was recovered undamaged, that bears on what the merchant actually lost.
Whether to pay, negotiate, or ignore a demand depends on the facts and on how it fits with restitution in the criminal case.
Casino offenses: theft on the floor and the cheating statutes
Two kinds of casino cases come up. The first is ordinary theft that happens on a casino floor: a wallet, a phone, or chips taken from another player, charged under the theft or larceny statutes above.
The second is a crime under Nevada’s gaming statutes. It is unlawful “to cheat at any gambling game,” and “cheat” means “to alter the elements of chance, method of selection or criteria which determine” the result of a game, the amount or frequency of payment, or the value of a wagering instrument or credit. A separate statute lists fraudulent acts, including placing or increasing a bet after learning the outcome (“past-posting” and “pressing”), reducing or cancelling a bet after learning the outcome (“pinching”), and, with intent to defraud, claiming money from a game without having made a wager or collecting more than was won.
A first violation is a category C felony. A second is a category B felony of 1 to 6 years with a fine up to $10,000, and in either case the court must order any profit paid over to the State. An attempt or a conspiracy carries the same penalty as the completed offense. A gaming licensee with probable cause to believe one of these crimes occurred may detain the person in the establishment for a reasonable time.
The surveillance video is the evidence in these cases, and the dispute is usually about what the player knew and intended: whether a bet adjustment was deliberate, whether a payout error was the dealer’s, whether chips were mistaken for one’s own.
Burglary in Nevada: entry with intent, not breaking in
Burglary in Nevada does not require breaking anything, and it does not require that anything be taken. It is a crime to unlawfully enter or unlawfully remain in a dwelling, business, motor vehicle, or other structure with the intent to commit grand or petit larceny, assault or battery, or any felony (and, for a dwelling, to obtain money or property by false pretenses). The crime is complete at entry.
| Offense | Grade |
|---|---|
| Burglary of a motor vehicle, first offense | Category E felony |
| Burglary of a motor vehicle, second or later | Category D felony |
| Burglary of a structure | Category D felony |
| Burglary of a business | Category C felony |
| Residential burglary | Category B felony, 1–10 years |
| Any burglary in which the person has or gains possession of a firearm or deadly weapon | Category B felony, 2–15 years, fine up to $10,000 |
Categories C, D, and E carry the same ranges as in the theft table; a category E felony carries 1 to 4 years, and for most category E felonies the court must suspend the sentence and grant probation. Probation for residential burglary is available only if mitigating circumstances exist and the person has no prior conviction for residential burglary or another unlawful entry into a dwelling.
Three definitions do most of the work.
- “Unlawfully enters or unlawfully remains” means entering or remaining “when the person is not licensed or privileged to do so,” including entry under false pretenses. Permission to be in the public part of a building is not permission to be in the part that is closed to the public. A casino’s back-of-house area or a store’s stockroom is the kind of place this language targets.
- “Dwelling” includes any room “customarily used by a person for overnight accommodations, regardless of whether the person is inside at the time.” A hotel room is a dwelling. Entering someone else’s hotel room without permission, with intent to steal, is residential burglary, the highest base grade.
- Entry “includes the entrance of the offender, or the insertion of any part of the body,” and the vehicle offense covers a motor vehicle “or any part thereof.” Reaching through an open car window can be an entry.
Intent is the contested element. A jury may “reasonably” infer intent from an unlawful entry “unless the unlawful … entry is explained by evidence satisfactory to the jury to have been made without criminal intent.” That is a permissive inference, not a presumption. A person who went into the wrong hotel room after a long night, or into a friend’s car to get a jacket, has an explanation the jury is entitled to accept.
Shoplifting as burglary of a business. Because the statute turns on whether the entry was unlawful, meaning not licensed or privileged, there is a real question whether walking into a store during business hours, through the public entrance, with intent to steal is an unlawful entry at all. The Nevada Supreme Court affirmed burglary convictions for entering businesses and stealing wallets in a 2025 decision, but the opinion did not decide that statutory question. It is an argument raised where the facts support it.
Burglary and theft are separate crimes. A person who commits another crime during a burglary “may be prosecuted for each crime separately,” so the State can convict of the burglary and of the theft committed inside. What it cannot do, the Nevada Supreme Court held in 2024, is convict of both the theft and possession of the same stolen property arising from a single act; those are “mutually exclusive, alternative offenses.”
Ending a misdemeanor theft case by civil compromise
For a misdemeanor where the injured party has a civil remedy, Nevada allows a civil compromise. If, before trial, the injured party appears and acknowledges in writing that it has received satisfaction, the court “may, in its discretion,” stay the prosecution and discharge the defendant, and the order bars another prosecution for the same offense. It is not available for an offense “committed with the intent to commit a felony,” among other exclusions, and it depends on both the victim’s cooperation and the court’s discretion.
What a theft conviction can affect besides the sentence
Sealing. A Nevada conviction can be sealed after a waiting period that depends on the grade: one year for most misdemeanors, two years for a category E felony or a gross misdemeanor, five years for a category B, C, or D felony, and ten years for residential burglary. A dismissed charge can be sealed at any time after the dismissal.
Immigration. Federal immigration law makes a non-citizen deportable for a conviction of “a crime involving moral turpitude committed within five years … after the date of admission” if the offense carries a possible sentence of one year or longer. A theft conviction can raise that question, and whether a specific Nevada theft offense qualifies is a question of immigration law that has to be answered before any plea.
Defending a Tahoe theft case
The store or casino video is requested and preserved first, because it answers the intent question the case usually turns on. Value is checked against the statute, not the price tag: fair market value at the time, whether aggregation is being used to reach a felony grade, and whether the items were recovered. The charging theory gets the same scrutiny. Where a store entry during business hours has been charged as burglary of a business, the unlawful-entry argument is made.
Bring the retailer’s demand letter to the first meeting. My office handles it alongside the criminal case, so that nothing paid to a collection firm is wasted or used against you.
A misdemeanor theft or petit larceny charge is resolved in Tahoe Justice Court for Stateline and the casino corridor, or East Fork Justice Court for the Carson Valley. A felony theft, burglary, or gaming charge starts in the same justice courts and, unless it is resolved there or the preliminary hearing is waived, moves to the Ninth Judicial District Court in Minden if the defendant is held to answer. My office arranges remote appearances where the court allows them and tells you in advance which dates need you in the courtroom.
From the first conversation with the prosecutor, the aim is a resolution that does not leave a theft conviction on your record: a reduction to a non-theft offense, a civil compromise where the statute allows one, or a dismissal after conditions are met. The earlier that work starts, the more of those options are still open. Licensing consequences are identified before any plea, and for a client who is not a U.S. citizen, immigration counsel is brought in before any plea is discussed.
If you are calling about a son or daughter, the person charged is the client, and the decisions in the case are theirs. How hiring works explains how a parent or other family member can pay for the defense.
Store and casino video is recorded over on the owner’s schedule. Hire me now, and I’ll get to work: the video is preserved, the value is checked, and the demand letter is handled alongside the case. Call FitzGerald Law.