Texas tampering with a governmental record — Penal Code § 37.10

Tampering with a governmental record is charged under Texas Penal Code § 37.10. The default grade is a Class A misdemeanor, intent to defraud or harm bumps the case to a state jail felony, and license-type records push it into third- or second-degree felony territory — while fake temporary tags now carry a fixed Class A grade. Below: the statute, the full grade ladder, verified case law, defense strategies, and how these cases actually move through Collin, Dallas, Denton, and Tarrant County courts.

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What Is Tampering With a Governmental Record Under Texas Law?

Section 37.10 sits in Chapter 37 of the Penal Code — the perjury and falsification chapter — and it sweeps far wider than most people charged under it expect. Under § 37.10(a), a person commits an offense if he or she: (1) knowingly makes a false entry in, or false alteration of, a governmental record; (2) makes, presents, or uses any record, document, or thing with knowledge of its falsity and with intent that it be taken as a genuine governmental record; (3) intentionally destroys, conceals, removes, or otherwise impairs the verity, legibility, or availability of a governmental record; (4) possesses, sells, or offers to sell a governmental record or a blank governmental record form with intent that it be used unlawfully; (5) makes, presents, or uses a governmental record with knowledge of its falsity; or (6) possesses, sells, or offers to sell a governmental record or blank form with knowledge that it was obtained unlawfully.

The reach comes from the definition. Penal Code § 37.01(2) defines "governmental record" to include anything belonging to, received by, or kept by government for information — court records included — anything required by law to be kept by others for the government's information, any license, certificate, permit, seal, title, letter of patent, or similar document issued by government (Texas, another state, or the United States), motor-vehicle liability insurance documents, official ballots and election records, and mobile food unit documentation. The Court of Criminal Appeals applied that breadth in Liverman v. State, 470 S.W.3d 831 (Tex. Crim. App. 2015), describing § 37.10 as the statute that penalizes false entries in governmental records and the presentation of false documents intended to pass as genuine governmental records.

Two practical consequences follow. First, paperwork most people never think of as "governmental" qualifies: a county clerk filing, a school enrollment form, a vehicle title application, an inspection report, a paper temporary tag. Second, the same conduct can often be charged under more than one prong of subsection (a) — and as discussed below, the prong the State picks can decide the case.

Elements the State Must Prove

Every § 37.10 prosecution must establish each element beyond a reasonable doubt. The elements vary by prong, but they group cleanly:

A culpable mental state tied to the specific prong

"Knowingly" for false entries and alterations under (a)(1); "knowledge of its falsity" plus "intent that it be taken as a genuine governmental record" under (a)(2); "intentionally" for destruction, concealment, or impairment under (a)(3); "intent that it be used unlawfully" for possession or sale under (a)(4); knowledge of falsity under (a)(5); and knowledge of unlawful procurement under (a)(6).

A governmental record — or a thing passed off as one

Prongs (a)(1), (3), (4), (5), and (6) require an actual governmental record as defined by § 37.01(2). Prong (a)(2) is different: it reaches any record, document, or thing presented with intent that it be taken as genuine, which is why counterfeit-document cases belong there.

The prohibited act

A false entry or alteration; making, presenting, or using; destroying, concealing, removing, or impairing verity, legibility, or availability; or possessing, selling, or offering to sell. Each verb has its own proof problems — "presenting" requires an audience, "concealing" requires that the record's availability actually suffered.

Falsity, where the prong requires it

For (a)(1), (2), and (5) the State must prove the entry or document was actually false — not merely incomplete, ambiguous, or wrong by someone else's hand.

Grade facts: intent to defraud or harm, or a special record type

The intent-to-defraud-or-harm allegation that elevates the case to a state jail felony — and the record categories that set felony grades under (c)(2) or special grades under (c)(3)–(6) and (d) — are facts the State must prove at trial, not labels it gets for free.

What Are the Penalties for Tampering With a Governmental Record?

Section 37.10 has one of the most intricate grade ladders in the Penal Code. The classification turns on two questions: what kind of record was involved, and did the actor intend to defraud or harm another? Liverman states the baseline rule — tampering committed "with intent to defraud or harm another" is a state jail felony absent the special circumstances spelled out elsewhere in § 37.10. The full ladder:

Confinement and fine figures come from the punishment article, Penal Code Chapter 12. Notice the insurance-document ladder in subsection (d): presenting a fake insurance card is a Class B misdemeanor, but making the same card is a third-degree felony, and adding fraud intent makes it second-degree. The make-versus-present distinction inside one subsection changes the exposure from 180 days to 20 years — a spread defense counsel has to address at the charging stage, not at trial.

Why Are Fake Temporary Tags Charged Under § 37.10?

Paper buyer's tags became a statewide enforcement story between 2019 and 2023, when fraudulent printouts sold through social media spread across the Dallas–Fort Worth corridor and beyond. Because a temporary tag functions as a government-issued registration document, prosecutors treated fakes as governmental-record cases — and before 2023, some charging decisions flirted with the third-degree-felony theory that a tag is a "similar document issued by government" under (c)(2)(A).

The 88th Legislature settled the question. House Bill 914 added § 37.10(c)(6), effective September 1, 2023: tampering involving "a temporary tag issued under Chapter 502 or 503, Transportation Code" is a Class A misdemeanor. The drafting detail that matters is in (c)(1), which begins "Except as provided by Subdivisions (2), (3), (4), (5), and (6)" — so the intent-to-defraud bump that normally creates a state jail felony does not attach to temp-tag cases. A fixed Class A grade replaced a charging landscape that ranged anywhere from Class A to third-degree felony. In the same session, House Bill 718 began moving Texas away from dealer-printed paper tags entirely, with metal plates issued at the point of sale phasing in during 2025 — which is shrinking the supply of legitimate-looking paper for counterfeiters but has not ended prosecutions for tags already in circulation.

Hypothetical example: a driver buys an $80 "paper plate" through a social-media seller to keep an uninsured car on the road and is stopped in Dallas County. Displaying that fabricated tag as if it were genuine fits § 37.10(a)(2), graded Class A under (c)(6). What the stop does next — search of the phone for the purchase thread, questions about who printed the tag — usually matters more to the final outcome than the tag itself, because sellers and printers face accomplice and Transportation Code exposure that buyers do not. (Hypothetical for illustration; not a description of any actual client or outcome.)

How Do Prosecutors Prove Tampering With a Governmental Record?

The State's file in a § 37.10 case is document-driven: the record itself, a custodian from the issuing agency to explain what a genuine record looks like and what the agency relies on it for, and forensic or digital evidence tying the defendant to the false entry — metadata, print logs, handwriting comparison, surveillance of a counter transaction, or the defendant's own statements at a traffic stop or interview.

Which prong the State pleads is not a technicality. In Alfaro-Jimenez v. State, 577 S.W.3d 240 (Tex. Crim. App. 2019), the State indicted a defendant under § 37.10(a)(4) and (a)(5) over a fake Social Security card. The Court of Criminal Appeals rendered an acquittal: those prongs by their plain language require proof that the document possessed or presented was an actual governmental record, and a counterfeit card was never issued by the United States, so it is not a governmental record under § 37.01(2)(C). Subsection (a)(2) — presenting a thing with intent that it be taken as a genuine governmental record — is the prong designed for counterfeits. The State charged the wrong theory and lost on legal sufficiency, after trial, on appeal.

On the grade fight, § 37.10(g) gives prosecutors a tool worth knowing about before any plea discussion: a person who acts with respect to two or more of the same type of governmental records or blank forms — where each is a license, certificate, permit, seal, title, or similar government-issued document — is presumed to intend to defraud or harm another. Presumptions in Texas criminal cases are instructed to the jury as permissive, and the defense can attack the foundation (are the documents really the "same type"?) and rebut the inference. But a second document in the glovebox changes the State's negotiating posture overnight.

What Defenses Work Against a § 37.10 Charge?

Defense strategy in tampering cases usually proceeds on three fronts at once — the mental state, the record, and the statute's own built-in defenses:

• No knowledge of falsity. Clerical errors, transposed numbers, forms filled out by someone else, and reliance on information supplied by a third party all negate the "knowingly" and "knowledge of its falsity" requirements. A wrong entry is not a false entry unless the actor knew it was false when made.
• No intent to defraud or harm. Even where falsity is provable, the felony bump under (c)(1) fails without proof of purpose to cause loss, disadvantage, or injury — and where the State leans on the § 37.10(g) presumption, the defense contests whether the documents are the same type and rebuts the inference with innocent-explanation evidence.
• Wrong-prong sufficiency attacks. Under Alfaro-Jimenez, a counterfeit document cannot support conviction under (a)(4) or (a)(5), because those prongs demand an actual governmental record. Indictments drafted before anyone examined the document closely are vulnerable, and the issue survives to appeal because it is legal sufficiency, not a forfeitable defect.
• The "no effect" defense, § 37.10(f). It is a defense to prosecution under (a)(1), (a)(2), and (a)(5) that the false entry or false information could have no effect on the government's purpose for requiring the record. The litigation centers on what the purpose of the record actually is — agency rules and the record's statutory function become defense exhibits.
• Authorized destruction, § 37.10(b). Destruction of a record pursuant to legal authorization — including compliance with the Local Government Code's records-retention provisions — is excepted from prosecution under (a)(3). Records-management disputes inside agencies and city halls belong here, not in criminal court.
• Official-duty possession, § 37.10(e). An affirmative defense covers possession under (a)(6) that occurred in the actual discharge of official duties as a public servant — the evidence-room and clerk's-office safety valve.
• Suppression. Temp-tag and fake-document cases routinely start with a traffic stop and end with a phone search. Challenging the stop's basis and the search's scope under the Fourth Amendment and Texas suppression practice can take the State's strongest proof of knowledge off the table.

Statutory-boundary arguments deserve respect in this corner of the Penal Code because the Court of Criminal Appeals enforces them. In Liverman, defendants who filed false mechanic's-lien affidavits were prosecuted under § 32.46 for securing execution of a document by deception; the CCA affirmed acquittals because a county clerk who records a filing does not "execute" the document — while observing that § 37.10 is the statute aimed at false filings. The lesson cuts both ways: the State must match its theory to the right statute and the right prong, and when it does not, the conviction does not stand.

Can a § 37.10 Charge Be Dismissed or Expunged?

Outright dismissals happen most often when the falsity or knowledge proof collapses — the agency custodian concedes the entry could be a processing error, or the document trail points to a different author. Short of dismissal, the DFW counties all operate pretrial-diversion and conditional-dismissal tracks for first-time, non-violent offenses; eligibility and terms vary by county and by the alleged fraud intent, and completing a program typically ends in dismissal.

The record-clearing math matters as much as the plea. A dismissal, acquittal, or no-bill can support an expunction under Code of Criminal Procedure Chapter 55A. Deferred adjudication on a § 37.10 charge — available in most of these cases — generally leads to an order of nondisclosure under Government Code § 411.072 or § 411.0725 after the applicable waiting period. A final conviction is permanent: no expunction, no sealing. Because the difference between "deferred then sealed" and "convicted forever" is enormous for a dishonesty-labeled offense, the disposition type is often the single most important negotiation point in the case.

Where Are § 37.10 Cases Filed in Collin, Dallas, Denton, and Tarrant Counties?

Collin County. Misdemeanor tampering cases are filed by information in the county courts at law and felonies proceed by grand-jury indictment in the district courts, all sitting at the Collin County Courthouse in McKinney. Collin filings in this lane often grow out of document-heavy referrals — school-district residency disputes, clerk's-office irregularities, and DMV paperwork — and the misdemeanor dockets move quickly toward disposition settings.

Dallas County. Felony cases are heard at the Frank Crowley Courts Building, with misdemeanors in the county criminal courts in the same complex. Much of the regional temp-tag enforcement attention has centered on Dallas County, so its dockets see a steady flow of (c)(6) Class A cases alongside felony license- and title-document prosecutions. Dallas County also runs structured diversion programming that counsel can target early.

Denton County. Cases are filed at the Denton County Courts Building, misdemeanors in the county criminal courts and felonies in the district courts. Practice here rewards early contact with the prosecutor assigned to the intake or grand-jury division, because grade selection — Class A versus the state-jail fraud-intent theory — is frequently negotiable before indictment.

Tarrant County. Criminal cases run through the Tim Curry Criminal Justice Center in Fort Worth. Tarrant prosecutors charge the full range of § 37.10 conduct, from inspection-paperwork cases to insurance-card and tag cases, and the county's deferred-prosecution options for lower-level offenses make the misdemeanor/felony line especially consequential at intake.

What Happens After a Tampering With a Governmental Record Arrest?

The procedural spine is the same as any Texas criminal case, with a few document-case wrinkles:

1. Arrest or summons. Many § 37.10 cases begin with a traffic stop (tags, insurance cards) or with an agency referral and an at-large warrant after an audit (clerk, school, DMV, Medicaid records — where the attorney general holds concurrent jurisdiction with consenting local prosecutors under § 37.10(i)).
2. Magistration. Within roughly 48 hours, a magistrate gives the Article 15.17 warnings and sets bond. Conditions in document cases are usually light, but employment-related cases can draw no-contact or no-access conditions touching the workplace.
3. Charging. Misdemeanors proceed by information; felonies go to a grand jury. The indictment's prong and grade allegations deserve immediate scrutiny — this is where Alfaro-Jimenez issues are born.
4. Discovery. The Michael Morton Act requires the State to produce its file; the defense subpoenas agency records-retention schedules, audit trails, and system logs that the State did not gather.
5. Pretrial motions. Suppression of the stop or the phone search, motions to quash defective prong allegations, and grade-fight litigation over the (g) presumption.
6. Resolution. Diversion, deferred adjudication, a reduced-grade plea, or trial. The dishonesty label drives the strategy: outcomes that keep the record sealable are worth more than modest punishment differences.

Hypothetical example: a school-district employee is accused of changing an address field so a relative's child could enroll. If the record was used to establish residency, the Legislature graded that exact scenario a Class C misdemeanor under (c)(3) — a fine-only offense the district will usually resolve administratively. The same keystroke on a different record, with an alleged purpose to obtain a benefit, could be pleaded as a state-jail felony. Identical conduct, two grades apart, depending entirely on record type and alleged intent. (Hypothetical for illustration only.)

Collateral Consequences Beyond the Criminal Case

Tampering is a falsification offense, and collateral systems treat it accordingly. Licensing agencies — the State Board for Educator Certification, the Board of Nursing, and other Occupations Code regulators — list fraud, deceit, and document-falsification convictions among their discipline triggers, and a § 37.10 judgment can open a parallel administrative case even when the criminal court grants deferred adjudication. Background-check vendors flag the offense name itself; for jobs that involve handling records, money, or compliance paperwork, the label can be more damaging than the punishment.

A felony-grade conviction adds the standard disabilities: firearm possession restrictions under Penal Code § 46.04 and federal law (18 U.S.C. § 922(g)), jury-service and public-office consequences, and immigration exposure — offenses involving fraud or deceit are treated severely in immigration proceedings, so non-citizen clients need immigration counsel looped in before any plea. Restitution can follow where an agency or person suffered loss. None of these consequences appears on the plea paperwork's punishment line, which is why they belong in the negotiation from day one.

How § 37.10 Differs From Neighboring Statutes

Chapter 37 and the fraud chapters contain a cluster of offenses that overlap at the edges, and prosecutors sometimes charge two or three in the alternative:

• Tampering with evidence — § 37.09 requires knowledge of a pending or in-progress investigation; § 37.10 has no investigation element and is about the record's integrity, not an inquiry's.
• Forgery — § 32.21 targets the making or passing of a forged writing with intent to defraud or harm; § 37.10 targets the governmental character of the record and does not always require fraud intent. Tag, title, and ID cases often straddle both.
• Securing execution of a document by deception — § 32.46 punishes deceiving another person into signing or executing a document. Liverman holds that filing a false affidavit with a clerk is not § 32.46 conduct — the tampering statute is the one that fits false filings.
• Perjury — § 37.02 and aggravated perjury — § 37.03 reach false sworn statements; § 37.10 reaches false records regardless of oath.
• False report to a peace officer — § 37.08 covers false crime reports to law enforcement; a false written entry in the report itself can be charged as tampering.
• Fraudulent use or possession of identifying information — § 32.51 attacks misuse of another person's identifiers and frequently rides alongside § 37.10 in fake-ID and benefits cases.
• Section 37.10(h) makes the overlap explicit for two specific neighbors: conduct that also violates § 32.48 (simulating legal process) or § 37.13 (record of a fraudulent court) may be prosecuted under any of those sections, at the State's election.

Registration- and license-adjacent traffic offenses — expired registration and driving while license invalid — frequently appear in the same stop as a tag case, and resolving them as a package is standard practice in DFW county courts.