Bad Checks

WASHINGTON -- Rep. Kweisi Mfume disclosed yesterday he wrote 12 bad checks at the now-closed House bank, becoming the third member of the Maryland congressional delegation among the 355 current and former lawmakers who had overdrafts.The three-term Baltimore Democrat had said he did not believe he had any overdrafts. But late Thursday night the House ethics committee told him he had a dozen overdrafts with a face value of just over $2,500.Half the checks were for amounts under $100, and all of them were covered within an average of seven days.

CHARLOTTE HALL -- Early crops sprouting along Route 5 this spring include the campaign signs of Rep. Steny H. Hoyer, a high-ranking Maryland Democrat brushed by the House banking scandal.In one farm field after another, passing motorists see the candidate's last name underscored by an elegant, flowing motif of Maryland's flag.Mr. Hoyer, who admitted last week that he wrote four bad checks, has to hope that voters will think of him in terms of the gold in the state flag and not the red -- which might remind them of huge federal deficits, of the half-billion-dollar savings and loan TC bailout, and of House members who wrote bad checks with impunity.

Washington. -- Don't you have anything better to worry about than the House Bank?One of the most entertaining things about the news is its arbitrariness. When is some story a huge outrage worthy of screaming headlines on Page One, and when does it deserve burial on page 23?Just lately, the rubber checks at the so-called House Bank have been getting the screaming Page One treatment. Two years ago, it was different.On Feb. 7, 1990, the General Accounting Office, the Congress' investigative arm, released a report on the House Bank.

WASHINGTON -- Maryland Democratic Rep. Steny H. Hoyer, who has repeatedly denied that he wrote any bad checks at the House bank, yesterday revealed that he wrote four overdrafts during his 11 years in Congress.The congressman, who has been critical of his colleagues for abusing the now-closed bank, said he learned about his own overdrafts -- written in 1991 and 1986 -- on Friday, following a call from the House ethics committee. No notices were ever sent from the House bank about the overdrafts, he said.

WASHINGTON -- One hundred House members bounced at least 45 checks at the House bank during the past three years, while another 133 lawmakers had five or fewer overdrafts, according to a House Ethics Committee report.The top abuser of the bank wrote 996 bad checks between July 1, 1988, and Oct. 3, 1991. That amounts to about one bad check per business day for more than three years.Even the official responsible for the bank, House Sergeant-at-Arms Jack Russ, bounced 19 checks drawn on other banks with a total value of $56,100.

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.

On a bright spring day last year, an Indian woman calling herself Savitri Nanan Nageshwar walked into the Glen Burnie Luskin's store, where a 52-inch television set caught her eye.The price of the television, together with a Mitsubishi videocassette recorder and matchingstand, came to $2,570. She applied and was approved for a Luskin's credit card. The items were delivered to an apartment on Sentry Circlein Odenton.Six months later, Savitri Nanan Nageshwar, also known as Savitri Radha Abdulaziz and a dozen other aliases, had not made a payment.

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 federal fugitive, arrested by the FBI in Dallas last month after he was featured on a national television show, has consented to detention on bank-fraud charges in U.S. District Court in Baltimore.John J. Irwin, 39, who authorities said has lived in at least seven states using a variety of aliases since he fled from Maryland in 1986, agreed to the detention pending trial in a brief hearing yesterday before a federal magistrate.Irwin is charged in a 1986 federal indictment in Baltimore with defrauding two Hagerstown banks and a bank in Deale out of more than $32,000 in a series of bad-check schemes.

The former publisher of an alternative newspaper in Annapolis faces theft and bad check charges after he turned himself in to authoritieslast week.Richard Lemerand, 49, of Annapolis, publisher of the defunct Annapolis Voice, is charged with writing four bad checks totaling $16,461 to the U.S. Postal Service to cover the cost of mailing the Voice. He is also accused of writing a $1,489 bad check to the owner of a direct-mail company in Annapolis.Lemerand left town at the end of May without telling business associates where he was going.