Bad-Check Program Expands to Include Glendale, Burbank

A county program that helps merchants recover the funds for bounced checks and sends first-time offenders to a check-writing school has been expanded to include Glendale and Burbank.

At a Glendale press conference Thursday morning, Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner said the Bad Check Enforcement Program has proved its worth in nearly two years of experimental operation in the San Gabriel Valley.

Reiner said the program has obtained payments of $429,864.06 for checks that were returned to merchants for insufficient funds and has paid its expenses since February through a $25 charge for each bad check.

Los Angeles is one of five Southern California counties authorized by the state Legislature to test the program, which departs from usual criminal procedure by eliminating police involvement and allowing the district attorney’s office to charge the accused a $25 fee for the office’s expenses.

The program is geared toward bad checks rather than professional forgeries and is designed to relieve police departments of the burden of investigating numerous complaints involving small or moderate amounts of money, said Capt. Ed Aleks, investigator for the district attorney’s office.

Merchants who want to use the program first need to contact the district attorney’s office to obtain a form that they send with the bounced checks directly to the district attorney. That office then sends a computer-generated letter similar to those used by collection agencies, Aleks said.

Unlike the usual collection letter, however, this one informs the check writer that the district attorney has a “strong prima facie case that a crime has been committed,” Aleks said.

The letter offers an alternative to prosecution--a four-hour weekend course in personal bookkeeping and ethics at the student’s expense plus the $25 charge, Aleks said.

So far, the writers of about a third of the 12,280 checks turned in by merchants have paid their debts and gone to class, Aleks said.

Some of the check writers are never found, and others, because of extenuating circumstances, are allowed time to repay their debts.

Criminal complaints have been filed against about 250 who refused to comply, and of those, about 150 were arrested in two “bad-check sweeps.” All pleaded guilty, Aleks said.

The district attorney’s office began the program in the east San Gabriel Valley in October, 1986, and expanded it west to Pasadena and south to the Orange County line last August.

Thursday’s extension also included nine cities in southeast Los Angeles County.