Ex-Agent Given Probation for Writing Bad Checks : Crime: A report says Lloyd Bloom is “not criminally oriented or antisocial” and seems contrite.

Former sports agent Lloyd Mitchell Bloom, who was convicted last year of illegally signing college athletes to professional sports contracts, was sentenced Thursday to three years probation for writing $14,300 in bad checks.

Bloom, 30, of Malibu, who originally faced nine counts of issuing checks for insufficient funds, entered a no-contest plea to one count before Van Nuys Superior Court Judge Raymond Mireles.

Mireles also sentenced Bloom to one year in jail but stayed the sentence on condition that Bloom make full restitution to his victims, including his former accountant, a moving company and two other companies.

Van Nuys Deputy Dist. Atty. Lea Purwin D’Agostino had requested a sentence of three years in prison, but Bloom’s lawyer, Ronald S. Miller, asked for leniency.

Bloom was labeled in a probation report as a “wheeler-dealer, a salesman and would-be entrepreneur . . . lacking a vital ingredient . . . sound judgment and business know-how.” But overall, he is “not criminally oriented or antisocial” and appears contrite, the probation report said.

Outside of court, Bloom said he is now an actor’s manager whose clients include Ken Wahl, star of the “Wiseguys” television series. He said he is producing a movie in which Wahl is starring.

The probation report quotes Bloom as saying he hired an accounting firm after suffering financial troubles as he struggled to pay legal fees for the federal trial, which also prevented him from working.

Bloom at first failed to pay the accounting firm, then paid with checks that bounced, the report said.

Bloom was convicted in June, 1989, along with Norby Walters, 58, of racketeering and mail fraud for secretly signing college athletes to professional sports contracts before the athletes’ college eligibility expired, and for using an organized-crime boss to intimidate athletes and entertainment figures who sought to end their business relationship with him.

He was sentenced to three years in prison but is free while the case is under appeal.