Need info for a friend who was arrested and charged w/Felony Theft of Wallet and Fake Id.
First the wallet:
He's 19, she's 25. Went to his friends w/his girlfriend for a couples type of dinner. Ate and had a good time, left and went out to bars. Had a great time, no problems.
The next morning he gets a call from his friend accusing him of stealing his girlfriends wallet. Other than having a fake ID from a friend, he's never broken any law, let alone stolen anything. He tried to reason with his friend and the friend called the police. A short while later the police call him, he explains the same thing: never saw a wallet, never stole it, have plenty of his own money, yada, yada, yada. The police grill him on if he knows who could have done it, he said only person with him was his girlfriend and she wouldn't have done it either.
After talking to police he calls his girlfriend. She said she did take a wallet sitting on the counter and it was hers. She had paid for pizza and thought she left her wallet out and stuck it in her purse. (Girlfriend looks into purse, and found 2 wallets looking very similar, now the girlfriend is petrified because she has a rap sheet for fighting in a bar as is afraid of involvement w/police) He called friend back and said there's been a misunderstanding and he found wallet and will bring it back to him.
His friends say okay and are happy. When he gets there, the police arrest him for possesion of stolen property and go through his wallet and car for other signs of stolen property. All the while, he's trying to explain about the misunderstanding about the wallet and that he's only returning it from someone else who took it by mistake. (There was no money missing and no unauthorized charges on any of the cards).
How can the police arrest and charge him when from the start he's never admitted to even taking the wallet and helped get it back?
He has 2 stable jobs, good credit and only one bill (car payment) and has plenty of money left over. He would never steal anything, and I don't think the girlfriend would either. How can either of them be charged w/criminal offenses when it was a mistake?
The boy's friends are being unreasonable and the police are not seeing that there could have actually been an innocent mistake, they are so jaded with all of the bad things they see, that they automatically assume guilt.
Concerned friend

