South Australian Current Acts South Australian Current Acts (1) A person is guilty
of theft if the person deals with property—
(a)
dishonestly; and
(b)
without the owner's consent; and
(c)
intending—
(i)
to deprive the owner permanently of the property; or
(ii)
to make a serious encroachment on the owner's proprietary
rights.
Maximum penalty:
(a) for
a basic offence—imprisonment for 10 years;
(b) for
an aggravated offence—imprisonment for 15 years.
(2) A person intends
to make a serious encroachment on an owner's proprietary rights if the person
intends—
(a) to
treat the property as his or her own to dispose of regardless of the owner's
rights; or
(b) to
deal with the property in a way that creates a substantial risk (of which the
person is aware)—
(i)
that the owner will not get it back; or
(ii)
that, when the owner gets it back, its value will be
substantially impaired.
(3) It is possible to
commit theft as follows:
(a) a
person may commit theft of property that has come lawfully into his or her
possession;
(b) a
person may commit theft of property by the misuse of powers that are vested in
the person as agent or trustee or in some other capacity that allows the
person to deal with the property.
Example—
Suppose that land is vested in a trustee in a fiduciary capacity. She is
empowered under the instrument of trust to mortgage the land for the purposes
of the trust. The trustee dishonestly mortgages the land as security for a
personal liability that is unrelated to the trust. In this case, the trustee
commits theft of the interest created by the mortgage.
(4) If a person
honestly believes that he or she has acquired a good title to property, but it
later appears that the title is defective because of a defect in the title of
the transferor or for some other reason, the later retention of the property,
or any later dealing with the property, by the person cannot amount to theft.
(5) Theft committed by
receiving stolen property from another amounts to the offence of receiving but
may be described either as theft or receiving in an instrument of charge and
is, in any event, punishable as a species of theft.
(6) If a person is
charged with receiving, the court may, if satisfied beyond reasonable doubt
that the defendant is guilty of theft but not that the theft was committed by
receiving stolen property from another, find the defendant guilty of theft.