Bad-Check Class Gives Congress Flunking Grade

Steve Stevens knows a thing or two about what’s happening on Capitol Hill. After all, like many Americans, Stevens has bounced a few checks--six, to be exact. Total value: roughly $500.

So on Saturday morning, Stevens was stuck in a bad-check diversion class run by the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office, listening to lectures on ethics, learning the rudiments of budgeting and balancing a checkbook--and wondering what his elected leaders in Washington were doing.

“Why should they be different?” complained the 33-year-old Brea resident, blasting one U.S. congressman--Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Coronado)--who at first admitted writing 160 bad checks, a total that was later recalculated to upward of 400. “If I wrote 160 bad checks, you wouldn’t see me here right now,” Stevens said. “I’d be behind bars!”

Three thousand miles from the Capitol dome--where 355 former and current House members were facing disclosure of their names for overdrawing on accounts at the House bank--the district attorney’s office was carrying on with its regular weekend courses for Joe (and Jane) Citizen, the average voter, the guy down the street who is caught violating Penal Code section 476A: writing a bad check.

Orange County has a similar course for check bouncers.

Every week, nearly 300 people attend the classes at locations throughout Los Angeles County as an alternative to going to jail. This session in Walnut was full of people like Stevens--working people, middle-class people with debts, problems and families--who expressed outrage over the escalating scandal in Washington.

“They voted themselves a 50% pay raise. Why are they out there writing bad checks?” demanded Greg Valentine, 32, of La Verne, who was in class after accepting a bad check, then writing three of his own on money he only thought he had. “Me, I wouldn’t have any money problems if I could vote myself that kind of pay raise. They’re all making two or three times what I’m making, anyway.

“Personally, I think they should all go to jail.”

Judging by the activity in Los Angeles, perhaps they are. According to officials at the district attorney’s office, the amount of bad paper circulating each day is enough to fuel a week’s worth of ticker-tape parades.

“We get between 7,000 and 8,000 (bad) checks every month,” said Larry Mulligan, administrator of the D.A.’s Bad Check Enforcement Program, which handles only a slice of the action. Many bad checks are handled by local police departments. Many others are never reported.

Through its enforcement program, the county attempts to recoup money for merchants--$5 million in the past six years--and to set check writers straight by going after even first-time violators through its one-day, one-time educational classes. By making restitution on overdrawn checks, paying $40 in administrative fees (plus $25 per check) and attending a four-hour session that is much like traffic school, the check bouncer avoids jail and keeps his criminal record (if not his credit record) clean.

But second-time violators, or those who cut class, may face the full brunt of the county’s new get-tough policy, which took effect a few years ago, Mulligan said. For even a single bad check, there is the likelihood of a misdemeanor or felony conviction leading to probation or possible jail time.

Serious check bouncers can get up to a year in state prison.

“So be careful, this is a very serious offense,” instructor Ron Scheidell, a district attorney’s investigator, warned the 30 violators at Walnut’s Mt. San Antonio College. “You’ve got to have money in the bank to write a check. It’s the same as cash.”

Orange County’s program was started 1 1/2 years ago after merchants complained that there was rampant abuse by check-writing customers.

So far, about 5,000 bad-check writers have attended the rehabilitation classes. Another 160 bad-check writers, who refused to attend the classes, have been prosecuted. A writer of rubber checks in Orange County can face up to 6 months’ imprisonment and a $1,000 fine.

“The whole aim of the program is to expose the rationalization that they could get around the system,” said Don Mealing, director of the Orange County district attorney’s Bad Check Prosecution Program. “It affects all stratas of society, even lawyers, doctors and CPAs. We would gladly welcome some of our congressmen now.”

In the class, check kiters are asked to tell their classmates “exactly how they got into trouble,” Mealing said.

“It’s called a values clarification exercise designed to help the individual confront their own rationalization,” Mealing said. “We want them to see that their behavior is inconsistent with societal values and their own values.”

He said writing bad checks “is symptomatic of a deeper personal problem. The bad-check writers rationalize that they are just using the systems to float themselves short-term loans. . . . Basically, they say, ‘I’m a nice guy, I intend to pay them back anyway,’ and then things get out of control.

“In the same way our congressmen rationalized that they weren’t hurting anybody, and it wasn’t taxpayers’ money.”

To many in the Los Angeles County class, their own transgressions seemed minor compared to those in Congress--to overdrafts such as the $129,000 that Hunter racked up, or even the $6,553 that Rep. William E. Dannemeyer (R-Fullerton) acknowledged.

Steve Greenberg, 37, of Santa Ana, claimed he wrote three bad checks totaling $300. The problem resulted, he said, from balancing his checkbook in his head--a dangerous practice because, as a private business owner, he handles large numbers of transactions.

“It’s ridiculous,” he said. “I believe there’s a double standard.”

Cynthia Wohler, 28, of Covina, an office manager who is supporting a family of five while her husband is on disability, blamed her own problems on three checks she bounced at the grocery store. She knew the money wasn’t in her account but hoped she could get it there in time.

“It definitely bothers me,” she said of the scandal in Washington. “To see what happens to them will be very interesting.”

Nearby, Paul Smit laughed in disbelief over the numbers. “I don’t understand how someone can be overdrawn by over $100,000.” He put much of the blame on the bank operator, now resigned, who was running the House account. “They wouldn’t authorize checks like that for me.”

Smit’s troubles were different. First, there was his wife. She spent and spent until she became his ex-wife, he said.

Smit blamed his troubles in part on the pool-service man, a guy who never did get rid of that algae. According to Smit’s account of events, Smit refused to pay him and the pool man retaliated by taking the pool filter.

“He was holding my pool filter for ransom,” the 38-year-old Covina resident said. “So I wrote him a check. I paid him out of an account that I’d closed.”

The pool man got the final word--with the district attorney.

Another student named Diane, who did not want her full name in the paper, committed one of the cardinal sins of check writing: While in the hospital, she wrote a number of blank checks, handing them over to her daughter-in-law to pay household bills.

By the time Diane returned home, the daughter-in-law was gone, and the bills were unpaid. Government authorities are still looking for the young woman.

Having endured that made her none too happy with the numbers games going on at the Capitol.

“From what I understand, nothing’s going to happen to them,” Diane said of her nation’s leaders.