Bad Checks

Don't write a bad check in Anne Arundel County.The state's attorney's Bad Check Unit is up and running and ready to prosecute anyone who writes a bad check, no matter how small the amount.The county will spend about $51,720 in salaries and benefits for a law clerk, secretary and office equipment. The program, which started Oct. 1, could generate about $200,000 a year from bad-check scofflaws and about $20,000 in service fees from their victims, said Frank Weathersbee, county state's attorney.

It is inexplicable that in an article about merchants bemoaning credit card interchange fees, the cost to businesses of processing cash and check purchases is never discussed ("Fee to pay with credit card could be in offing," Aug. 14). I worked in retail for many years, and I know that accepting cash or checks costs merchants time and money. There's the issue of counterfeit bills, mistakes in making change, employee pilfering and bad checks that can require the merchant's appearance in court as a consequence.

A Hampstead man and woman accused of passing bad checks were arrested yesterday after police raided a home in the 3900 block of Shiloh Ave. and seized items related to checks previously reported stolen in the town, court records show.Charged with forgery, cashing bad checks, theft under $300 and related conspiracy counts were Phillip D. Wickline, 19, of the Shiloh Avenue address and Gabrielle D. Delaney, 19, of Sunset Drive.Police said suspected marijuana and drug paraphernalia were found in the raid at 10 a.m. They also charged Wickline and Delaney with possession of marijuana and possession of paraphernalia.

A Baltimore judge on Monday ordered a Reisterstown man to serve a five-year prison term that was suspended nearly 20 years ago, the Maryland Attorney General's Office announced. Roy H. Adler, 52, was convicted in 1991 of embezzling more than $4 million from his employer and Blue Cross/Blue Shield while working as an accountant. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison, with half of it suspended, and ordered to pay $3.2 million restitution. But Baltimore City Circuit Court Judge Lynn K. Stewart on Monday ordered him to complete the remainder after finding that he'd stopped paying the money he owed more than two years ago. Adler, who has admitted a gambling problem, is scheduled to stand trial in February on another case alleging he wrote several bad checks.

The Howard County School System has implemented a new program to collect on insufficient-funds checks. On Aug. 1, the school system started using the Federal Automated Recovery Systems for the electronic collection of checks. Officials said the new system will allow for a higher rate of recovery at no additional cost to the school system. The school system receives more than 800 insufficient-funds checks each year, according to Howard County officials. The process of collecting the checks is an "arduous task," according to Beverly Davis, the school system's director of finance.

When William D. Hipp bought a used lawn tractor last year with a bad check, he probably didn't expect to buy 10 years in the slammer.After all, Hipp, of the 3000 block of Lineboro Drive in Manchester, had been charged with passing bad checks at least 30 times since 1971 and had served little jail time.But yesterday, Circuit Judge Raymond E. Beck Sr. sentenced the 45-year-old to 10 years in state prison. Actually, Hipp will serve a maximum of five years behind bars, because Judge Beck suspended five years of the sentence.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Nervous House members must wait at least through January to learn the outcome of an ethics investigation into rubber check-writing at the chamber's bank.Rep. Matthew F. McHugh, D-N.Y., who is heading the investigation, said in a floor speech yesterday that information on individual members' accounts "is not easily accessible and will take time to compile."But he added that the General Accounting Office, which is assisting the House ethics committee, has assured the panel "it will be able to provide all the necessary information by the end of January 1992."

A Westminster woman will spend at least two years in prison after pleading guilty Wednesday yesterday to passing more than $2,750 in bad checks to local merchants last summer.Mary Katherine Reardon, 25, of Main Street also pleaded guilty to stealing more than $3,800 from her mother's accounts at Taneytown Bank and Trust. In addition, she pleaded guilty to pouring charcoal lighter fluid over an acquaintance's car last summer.In exchange for the guilty pleas, prosecutors dropped the remaining charges from a total of 16 cases against Reardon on Wednesday.

Police arrested two Washington men and a woman Wednesday and charged them with stealing a U-Haul truck and passing several thousand dollars worth of bad checks at Laurel area businesses.Kevin Lamont Washington, 20, of the 4600 block of Dix St. N.E.; Mounty Terrel Pugh, 22, of the 1300 block of Stevens Road S.E. and Angela Tyler, 25, of the 3400 block of 13th Place S.E. were charged with unlawfully taking an automobile, uttering a false document, felony theft, possession of a concealed deadly weapon, possession of marijuana and forging a private document.

Write a bad check at Doc & Annie's, and you'll get a taste of fame. Michael "Doc" King will see to it.The co-owner of the Brooklyn Park tavern might never get his money back, but he has his own kind of revenge.It's a roadside sign with changeable letters. On the upper tier it reads "Doc & Annie's," as it has for more than a decade. But below that, there's apt to be a personal message from Mr. King.These days, it's "Jackie McLung writes bad checks."This particular bar patron did, in fact, write three of them totaling $95. And Mr. King wants it known to everyone driving the busy commercial stretch of Ritchie High- way.For four years, Mr. King has gotten back at a dozen patrons who stuck him for a bar tab or rent on an upstairs room by embarrassing them publicly.

As a federal judge sentenced a Maryland businessman Friday to three years in prison for defrauding two banks of millions of dollars, calling the sentence a substantial penalty levied on a man who previously never had so much as a speeding ticket. U.S. District Judge Benson E. Legg's sentence for Brian I. Satisky, 56, followed federal sentencing guidelines. Satisky could have received up to 51 months in prison for his role in writing bad checks to Carrollton Bank and Baltimore County Savings Bank, falsely inflating his account balances in a scheme known as check kiting.

The Howard County School System has implemented a new program to collect on insufficient-funds checks. On Aug. 1, the school system started using the Federal Automated Recovery Systems for the electronic collection of checks. Officials said the new system will allow for a higher rate of recovery at no additional cost to the school system. The school system receives more than 800 insufficient-funds checks each year, according to Howard County officials. The process of collecting the checks is an "arduous task," according to Beverly Davis, the school system's director of finance.

A federal grand jury indicted Tuesday the surviving owner of A&B Check Cashing - named the 2003 "check casher of the year" by Financial Service Centers of America - on charges that he and his brother ran a three-year "kiting" scheme that netted more than $12 million from two Maryland banks. According to a 12-count indictment, Brian Satisky and his brother, Alec, who committed suicide in 2006, perpetrated the scheme by writing bad checks on one account, depositing them into another and using that account to write more bad checks to cover the first.

The civil rights unit of the Maryland attorney general's office is investigating the sentencing of an African-American man with no previous criminal convictions to 30 years in prison for writing bad checks. Carl O. Snowden, the attorney general's director for civil rights, said yesterday that he is looking into the situation in response to a complaint filed by the Baltimore County branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Describing the sentence of Andrew Maurice Fisher as "blatant discrimination," Pat Ferguson, president of the local NAACP chapter, likened the situation to that of the "Jena 6" case, in which claims of racial discrimination have been made involving the prosecution of a group of black students in Louisiana.

For years, local prosecutors have been turning to private companies to help collect on bad checks. But now consumer advocates worry that these companies will be exempt from federal consumer protection laws if legislation is approved by Congress. Public Citizen and National Consumer Law Center warned at a news conference in Washington yesterday that consumers who accidentally bounce a check for even small amounts could be subject to excessive fees and deceptive practices from for-profit debt collectors.

Baltimore prosecutors say Michael Murray ordered merchandise from companies like Coca-Cola Co. and Gillette Co., paid for it with bad checks and immediately ordered more products for nearly two years. In the end, authorities say, the Baltimore man defrauded nine companies of more than $335,000 in merchandise. Yesterday, he pleaded guilty to a felony theft charge and could be sentenced to as much as 18 months in prison and five years of supervised probation. He also could be ordered to pay up to $112,822 in restitution.

Anne Arundel County Councilman Tom Redmond remembers the phone conversation fairly well.He was trying to get a customer of his Pasadena auto parts business to pay up on a $15 bad check. The man laughed at him. "He said, 'You're not going to court over a $15 check,' " Mr. Redmond recalled.The customer was wrong.With the help of the Anne Arundel County state's attorney, the man was charged in District Court with writing a bad check and later held in contempt of court when he ignored a summons.

A catcher's mitt would be a rather extreme solution.But the county comptroller is looking for a way to deal with the growing number of rubber checks bouncing around county government these days.The increase in bad checks, issued by citizens purchasing minor items from the government, has prompted the county to consider a penalty fee for returned checks, said Eugene C. Curfman, the comptroller for Carroll.Though not yet an epidemic, the bad-check situation isa ballooning problem,Curfman said.

A Towson man and his wife are in danger of losing their business after First Mariner Bank held the couple responsible for more than $80,000 in checks it had cleared, but were later found to be fraudulent. The checks were written to their business, Appel & Cook IT Systems Inc., by a businessman from Africa, who made two purchases of computer equipment. It was later found that the man, who identified himself as Mr. James, had written counterfeit checks off an account in Texas. First Mariner, which cleared the checks, has frozen the couple's business account and issued a claim to have the money repaid.

People caught writing bad checks in Anne Arundel County may be sent back to school for a crash course in personal-finance management and self-improvement. A new privatized program in the county is building on a 2-decades-old effort by the state's attorney's office that has diverted thousands of cases from court and gotten millions of dollars returned to merchants. Until now, merchants have had to pay to recoup their losses - $5 or 10 percent of the bounced check amount and sometimes the $25 fee banks assess a merchant when a check bounces, plus mailing and incidental fees - which eats into the sums they recover.