Bounced

In an attempt to halt the amount of bounced checks received by the town, the Town Council last week enacted a bad-check ordinance.Thenew ordinance, effective immediately, means that any person who has two checks returned to the town for insufficient funds will not be able to use a personal check to pay for town services for a period of five years.

ESPN college football analyst Andre Ware said on “College Football Live” Wednesday that he expects Maryland to be one of the country's “bounce back” teams in 2013. Pointing to the return of quarterback C.J. Brown and the emergence of wide receiver Stefon Diggs, Ware said that “anything short of a bowl game will be a disappointment.” Calling Diggs “one of the most underrated” players in the country, Ware added Maryland to a list that includes Missouri and Miami.  Ware pointed to the fact that the Terps were 4-2 before a rash of season-ending injuries to Brown and freshmen quarterbacks Perry Hills and Caleb Rowe led to Maryland losing its last six games.

WASHINGTON -- The House of Representatives, attempting to conclude an embarrassing chapter in its history, ordered the closure of the House bank yesterday in the wake of revelations that it had covered thousands of bad checks written by lawmakers."

The visiting Loyola Greyhounds put a 13-12 overtime loss against Denver on April 13 behind them, using runs of six and seven unanswered goals to defeat Hobart, 19-11, on Saturday. Loyola's starting attack of Mike Sawyer (four goals, two assists), Zach Herreweyers (three, two) and Justin Ward (three, one) accounted for 10 goals and 15 points. The Greyhounds (10-3, 6-1 Eastern College Athletic Conference) scored the game's first six goals, but the Statesmen (6-7, 2-4) answered with five.

Now that the House bank - whose advertising slogan could have been, "No fees ... no matter what!" - is closed, congressmen will have to take their business to the same banks that the rest of us use.And if they continue their check-bouncing ways, they'll soon become acquainted with the area banks' NSF (non-sufficient funds) fees, which are said to average $25 for each bad check. Here's what they'd pay in penalties:*The 8,331 bad checks written by House members in the year ending June 30, 1990: $208,275*The as-yet unnamed congressman who wrote 996 rubber checks in the 39-month period under review: $24,900*The 100 congressmen who bounced at least 45 checks each in three years: $1,125 eachThose fees, of course, don't include any that are levied by merchants, many of whom charge whenever they have to return a check.

For those voters who have been perplexed by the complexities of deficit spending and the slick rhetoric of budget balancing, the members of the House have offered a stunningly simple, albeit unintentional, explanation.Last week the public learned that members of the esteemed lawmaking body had left more than $300,000 in unpaid tabs at the chamber's cafeteria and had written -- and bounced -- more than 8,300 checks at the House bank.With federal legislators unable to keep their own finances in order -- writing bad checks and neglecting to pay the bills -- it's no wonder there is no fiscal discipline in Washington and that the nation is swamped in red ink.

The owner of bankrupt Duralite Truck Body & Container Co. has pleaded guilty to charges of writing bad checks and has been ordered to pay more than $11,000 in restitution to workers left holding bounced paychecks and unpaid medical bills.The plea agreement gives John F. Smith 18 months of unsupervised probation. Smith will have no criminal record if he successfully completes the terms of his probation.Smith, 52, of the 900 block of Rolandvue Ave., Towson, entered his plea before Baltimore Circuit Judge Kenneth Lavon Johnson yesterday, as nearly 40 former employees of the southeast Baltimore plant packed the courtroom and protested the sentence as a wrist slap.

Baltimore police have arrested a man and charged him with buying more than $100,000 worth of high-tech electronic equipment with bogus checks and then reselling the merchandise to unsuspecting customers.Detective Kyle D. Zavorotny of the check and fraud unit said the man allegedly used the name of a legitimate Baltimore County business to get checks drawn on a Missouri bank -- and used them to buy computers, copy machines and laser printers.Police said their investigation has uncovered 30 to 40 companies in the Baltimore and Washington area that sold the man equipment, starting in June, but never got their money because the checks allegedly bounced.

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.

WESTMINSTER -- When he found a 22-year-old woman guilty of three counts of bad checks, Circuit Judge Raymond E. Beck Sr. told her she used "a pen like someone uses a pistol."Victoria Cunningham, was found guilty of writing three bad checks at county grocery stores last year after she agreed to plead not guilty but accept the state's version of the facts.One of the checks was for $224 at George's Super Thrift in Eldersburg, another was for $296 at the Westminster Co-Op grocery store, and the third was for $132 at Millers Food Market.

NEW YORK - Less than two weeks into the season, the Orioles' ability to bounce back from difficult defeats has already been tested. Friday night's was a hard one to swallow - a game lost on a dropped fly ball that plated three runs and a rally-killing triple play. These Orioles, however, showed their mettle Saturday, getting a much-needed jolt from the bottom of the batting order in a 5-3 win over the New York Yankees in front of an announced 41,851 at Yankee Stadium. “I can look at highlights tonight,” Orioles manager Buck Showalter said.

The Notre Dame Prep Girls Lacrosse Tournament wasn't set up to crown an overall winner, but the Century players certainly left Towson on Saturday afternoon feeling like champions. In the second annual three-team, round-robin event, the No. 10 Knights came way with wins over No. 3 Notre Dame Prep, 12-9, and No. 4 South River, 17-5. Playing their second and third ranked opponents in eight days, the Knights wanted to make up for an 11-7 loss to then-No. 10 C. Milton Wright on March 23. In that game, they fell behind, 4-0, when the Mustangs started off with four extra-man goals in two minutes and Century never caught up. This time, the Knights, the defending Class 3A-2A state champions, used their own extra-man goals to get the jump on the Seahawks in the final game of the tournament.

Maryland rediscovered itself Saturday, and Virginia is still searching. Terps attackman Jay Carlson scored three goals, and the No. 5 Maryland men's lacrosse team - behind a dominating midfield that scored five times - held on for a 9-7 victory over No. 13 Virginia in front of an announced crowd of 5,226 at Klockner Stadium. The Terps (7-1), who suffered a 10-8 upset loss to North Carolina on March 23, showed no side effects of that loss. Besides Carlson's three goals, offensive midfielders John Haus added two and Mike Chanenchuk had one. But the surprise of the day was long-pole midfielder Jesse Bernhardt's two goals, which showed how the Terps controlled the pace of the game and how quickly goalkeeper Niko Amato got the ball out on clears.

St. Mary's squandered a 10-point lead Friday and lost, 69-66, to Mary Hardin-Baylor in the NCAA Division III men's basketball quarterfinals in Salem, Va. The 11th-seeded Seahawks, who finished their season 27-4, setting a school record for victories, fell in the Elite Eight for the second time in the past three years. Senior guard James Davenport (Loyola) led St. Mary's with 16 points, 11 of which came in the second half. Sophomore guard Nick LaGuerre (Lansdowne) and first-year forward Troy Spurrier (Glenelg)

SARASOTA, Fla - If anything, there were only whispers. Nothing damning, nothing loud. No one within the Orioles organization wanted to show real concern, not in March, not with the blessed right arm of their future, 20-year-old Dylan Bundy. But after Bundy's performance Saturday against the Boston Red Sox - one in which the universally regarded top pitching prospect in baseball managed only 18 strikes in 35 pitches and consistently threw his mid-to-high 90s fastball at 91-to-93 mph - there was some quiet consternation.

It's not that top-ranked Maryland hadn't played well enough to win in recent days. For a team intent on bringing another national title back to College Park, however, uneven performances against Hofstra and UMBC left much to be desired. For the Terrapins, Saturday's game against No. 9 Penn State presented the ideal opportunity to make a statement. "We felt like we had something to prove today," senior Alex Aust said. "We really wanted to come out and play better than we played last week.

Late last year, Beth Reynolds wrote the Columbia Association a $74 check to buy swimsuits for her children.The check bounced.She wrote another. It included a $28 bad-check fee.It cleared.Yet four months later, Reynolds was led away in handcuffs from her home on a cul-de-sac in Columbia's affluent River Hill Village. Her crime: writing the bad $74 check."I was too scared to ask them questions," Reynolds said. "I was humiliated. They handcuffed me, walked me to the car. I wasn't crying. I was just in shock.

LESS THAN a year after launching an investigation into the misuse of federal dollars by one of the nation's premier institutions of higher education, Stanford University, members of the House of Representatives find themselves stung by embarrassing revelations that they, too, have incurred some questionable indirect costs in going about their business.The September General Accounting Office audit revealing that House members bounced 8,331 checks last year at the House bank without having to pay a cent in penalty fees or interest has sent members scurrying to find out to what extent they were involved.

The driving rainstorm that chilled the crowd at Ridley Athletic Complex in Baltimore had no impact on Justin Ward. The junior attackman set career highs in both goals and points to power No. 4 Loyola to a 21-9 thrashing of visiting UMBC on Tuesday night in front of an announced crowd of 442. The reigning national champion Greyhounds (3-1) bounced back from last Saturday's 12-10 loss to then-No. 3 Maryland, and they have Ward to thank. The Glen Burnie native and Old Mill graduate finished with a game-high10 points on seven goals and three assists.

Navy trails, 15-7, in this series and has dropped seven of the last eight meetings. The Midshipmen (2-1) suffered their first loss of the season, falling to No. 18 Fairfield, 10-9, last Tuesday in a contest in which they failed to protect three one-goal leads in the fourth quarter. Georgetown opened its first season under new head coach Kevin Warne, a former Maryland defensive coordinator, with an 11-10 overtime setback to Lafayette last Saturday. Here are a few factors that could play a role in the outcome at Multi-Sport Field in Washington, D.C., on Sunday.