What is the test for instructing a jury to convict a defendant of theft by false pretenses?

People v. Beaver, supra, 186 Cal.App.4th 107 is directly on point. The court held instructional error was prejudicial where the jury is instructed on theft by larceny but the evidence could support only a conviction of theft by false pretenses because the defendant did not "[take] the property without the owner's consent"; the victim gave the property to the defendant under the defendant's false pretense that he had been injured due to the fault of the victim. (Id. at pp. 122, 123, 125.) The Beaver court reasoned that to allow a conviction of theft by false pretenses when the jury was instructed only on theft by larceny would relieve the prosecution of its burden to prove the additional elements of reliance and corroboration: "[T]he instructions read to the jury did not include all the elements necessary for a charge of theft by false pretenses. Therefore, even if there was sufficient evidence in the record to support such a charge, the failure to instruct on those elements violated defendant's constitutional rights to have the charges decided by a jury." (Id. at p. 125.) The court stated it could not find the error harmless beyond a reasonable doubt (Chapman v. California (1967) 386 U.S. 18, 24) because there was substantial doubt about the credibility of the witnesses whose evidence the jury would have had to believe to find the elements of theft by false pretenses. (Beaver, supra, 186 Cal.App.4th at p. 125.)