Is Possessing a Forgery Device a Crime in AZ? ARS 13-2003

Is Possessing a Forgery Device a Crime in Arizona?

Yes — and it is a felony even if you never forged anything. Under A.R.S. § 13-2003, criminal possession of a forgery device punishes the tools, not the finished forgery. The statute reaches plates, dies, apparatus, equipment, software, access devices, and even ordinary materials and supplies — when they are connected to the intent the statute requires.

The Two Forms of the Charge

The statute has two distinct prongs, and they carry different classes:

• 13-2003(A)(1) — Class 6 felony: making or possessing a device specifically designed or adapted for forging written instruments, with knowledge of its character and intent to commit fraud. Think check-printing plates, ID-card presses, embossers, and dedicated forgery software.
• 13-2003(A)(2) — Class 5 felony: making or possessing any device or material merely adaptable for forgery, with intent to use it (or let someone else use it) for forgery. This is the broader, more serious prong — and it can sweep in everyday items: a laptop, a scanner, a printer, blank card stock.

Read that again, because it surprises people: the ordinary equipment prong is the higher felony class. What converts a home printer into a Class 5 felony is not the machine — it is the intent the State claims goes with it.

Intent Is the Entire Case

Nobody gets charged for owning a scanner. These cases are built on context evidence: what was found alongside the equipment (blank checks, other people’s IDs, card stock, templates), what was on the computer, what messages say, and what any completed documents look like. That means the case is only as strong as the inference of intent — and inferences can be fought:

• Equipment with legitimate uses and a legitimate explanation — design work, printing businesses, hobby crafts — undercuts the inference;
• Shared spaces and shared devices raise the same constructive-possession problems as drug cases: whose intent, exactly?
• Software cases turn on who installed and used what, which forensic examination can genuinely answer;
• And where the alleged purpose was a specific document, the State’s theory must match the physical evidence.

Penalties

A first-offense Class 5 felony carries probation up to 2.5 years in prison; a Class 6, probation up to 2 years. Both bring a felony record with the standard collateral damage — and because these are fraud-family offenses, the professional-licensing and employment consequences tend to be worse than the sentence itself. Class 6 counts can often be designated misdemeanors; that, plus diversion in appropriate cases, is a central negotiating target.

Defenses

• No intent to defraud or use for forgery — the equipment had a lawful purpose and the State’s inference fails;
• No knowing possession — shared homes, shared computers, roommates’ property;
• Suppression — these cases usually start with a search, and an unlawful search takes the devices out of evidence;
• Not “specifically designed or adapted” — fighting the (A)(1) characterization, and the class, of ordinary equipment;
• Reduction and designation — moving an (A)(2) Class 5 to an (A)(1) Class 6, then to a designatable misdemeanor.

How Tamou Law Group Defends Forgery Device Cases

We defend the inference. The State must connect equipment to a specific fraudulent intent, and that connection usually rests on context that has innocent explanations, forensic questions about who used what, and a search that can be challenged. Where the evidence is genuinely mixed, the class ladder (5 to 6 to designated misdemeanor) gives real room to negotiate.

Related reading: falsely accused of identity theft (13-2008), caught with a fake ID, and our Scottsdale white collar crimes lawyer page. Call 623-321-4699, 24/7.