COUNTYWIDE : $2.7 Million in Bad Checks Repaid

Bad-check passers have repaid more than $2.7 million to their victims in Ventura County in the six years since a state law made prosecution easier, according to the district attorney’s office.

Before the change, local prosecutors seldom had the resources to take check bouncers to court, said Vinse J. Gilliam, head of the district attorney’s check restitution and prosecution unit.

“Local police were overwhelmed by paperwork,” Gilliam said. Because a prosecutor needed a court verdict before forcing a bad-check passer to pay restitution, not much was being done about such checks, he said.

But a 1985 statute allowed prosecutors to place check bouncers in the kind of diversion program once reserved for drug abusers, Gilliam said.

To avoid prosecution, the check bouncer must make restitution and pay a $25 administrative fee for each bad check, he said.

If the accused bad-check bouncer fails to respond within 10 days, he or she is assessed an additional $40 and required to attend a one-day class in household budgeting, Gilliam said.

In six years, the fees have exceeded the check unit’s operating expenses by $118,200, with the excess returned to the county’s General Fund, according to a report to be issued today. “The enforcement is now being paid for by the crook,” Gilliam said.

The district attorney’s office has collected an annual average of $455,000 in restitution and distributed it to the victims of the bad-check passers, the report said. During the time the bad-check unit has operated, 5,058 victims, most of them merchants, submitted $67,167 in bad checks, according to the report.