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Va. Code Ann. § 18.2-59

Extortion of money, property or pecuniary benefit

Applied in 6 court decisions — leading case 149 F. Supp. 2d 246 - Warner v. Buck Creek Nursery, Inc. (2001)

Most recently applied in Silverman v. Town of Blackstone (February 2012)

Code 1950, § 18.1-184; 1960, c. 358; 1975, cc. 14, 15; 2006, c. 313; 2007, cc. 453, 547; 2010, c. 298.

How often courts cite this section

199320002010201210
citing decisions per year

Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.

Any person who (i) threatens injury to the character, person, or property of another person, (ii) accuses him of any offense, (iii) threatens to report him as being illegally present in the United States, or (iv) knowingly destroys, conceals, removes, confiscates, withholds or threatens to withhold, or possesses any actual or purported passport or other immigration document, or any other actual or purported government identification document, of another person, and thereby extorts money, property, or pecuniary benefit or any note, bond, or other evidence of debt from him or any other person, is guilty of a Class 5 felony.

For the purposes of this section, injury to property includes the sale, distribution, or release of identifying information defined in clauses (iii) through (xii) of subsection C of § 18.2-186.3, but does not include the distribution or release of such information by a person who does so with the intent to obtain money, property or a pecuniary benefit to which he reasonably believes he is lawfully entitled.

Official source: Virginia Law Portal (LIS). Reproduced from public-domain Virginia statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.