Countywide : Bad-Check Program Repays Merchants $640,000 in 1992

People who wrote bad checks in Ventura County paid back nearly $640,000 to the recipients of their bounced checks in 1992 while avoiding prosecution, the Ventura County district attorney’s office announced Friday.

During the first seven years of the innovative Non-Sufficient Funds Check program, Ventura prosecutors collected $3.4 million in funds and returned them to the victimized merchants, said Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury.

The collected money was used to fully compensate the recipients of 41,144 dishonored checks, Bradbury said.

Besides making good on the bad checks, bad-check passers also paid $1.4 million in diversion fees, enough to pay for the program’s administration, with $178,290 in excess funds being donated to the county’s general fund.

Results from the program’s seventh year will be presented to the Ventura County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday.

During the course of the program, the unit has issued arrest warrants for 2,231 of the most serious offenders who did not participate in the diversion program.

Court-ordered restitution in those cases accounted for another $1 million in funds returned to the victims, Bradbury said.

The program started in 1985, when Ventura County was one of eight counties that the Legislature authorized to start a one-year pilot program to pursue non-sufficient check cases, said Deputy Chief Investigator Vinse J. Gilliam. Because of the program’s success, the Legislature authorized other counties to implement it the following year, he said.