Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

Prosecutor Meets With Local Merchants

Hot checks are a problem all business men and women face in the day to day operation of their businesses.

Sometimes it's difficult to know what to do with the bad paper being passed around by those who have little or no concern for others.

Randy Wright, prosecuting attorney-elect for the 8th Judicial District North, spoke to the Prescott Retail Merchants Association Tuesday, June 9, on what to do when they receive hot checks.

The hot check program was begun in Prescott and Nevada County the first of the year and has had favorable results.

Wright said the idea is to prevent merchants from being burned by the bad paper and being able to recover their money if they do get hot checks.

A hot check, he explained, is one written on an account with either insufficient funds or the account has been closed.

Once a merchant learns the check they received from a customer is bad, the should immediately contact the municipal clerk and report it. There is paperwork to be filled out so charges can be filed against the person who wrote the check.

Wright said merchants should know 50 percent of all hot checks written are in the 100 series number of checks, while 85 percent are through the 300 series of checks. Low check numbers, he told the merchants, can mean low reliability.

He also suggested the merchants have their employees get identification from those who pay with checks. The identification should include a current address and phone number along with a birth date.

Wright said merchants should also check to see the signature on the check matches the one on the identification. Driver's licenses, he said, make the best ID, as they also have photos which can be checked.

Another thing he told the business men and women to check is the spelling of the name. Sometimes, he said, someone writing a check on someone else's account will misspell the name, even though it's on the check.

Employees, he said, need to write the pertinent information down on the front of the check, as banks stamp the back where most info is placed. Once stamped, it's difficult to read the data.

All information gathered, Wright said, is important in helping track down the person who wrote the bad check and enhances the chance of collecting.

Should a person have Arkansas checks but no in state driver's license, Wright said, it is best not to take the check. Such incidents should be red flags for business people.

Still, there will be those who can pass bad checks to businesses. When this happens, Gina Ferguson said, the business person must fill out an affidavit. These affidavits can be picked up in the municipal clerk's office at the courthouse.

Once the paperwork is done, the check should be stapled to the affidavit and everything be mailed to Wright's office in Hope.

When his office receives the information, it will attempt to contact the person who wrote the hot check and then have a warrant issued for their arrest.

Janice Porterfield, also with Wright's office, said they send the letter, which is why an address is needed. When possible, she said, the employees need to get social security numbers as well, as these can be used to track the individual down.

Actually arresting people is the last resort, Wright said, as no one gets paid with the suspect in jail.

What happens, he said, is he tries to reason with the person passing the bad checks, letting them know if they don't pay up they will be arrested and sent to jail.

When the person cooperates, he said, they also have to pay Wright's office the merchant's fee (usually $20) as well as the money owed and other costs involved.

Porterfield said this service is free to the merchants.

Ferguson said once a hot check has been turned over to them, a merchant should not accept payments on it, but if a merchant does accept payments, they need to contact Wright's office so the legal machine can be stopped.

There is a one-year statute of limitations on prosecuting a person for writing a hot check, Wright said, so a merchant getting bad paper should not delay in letting his office know.

"A lot of people who write hot checks don't do it on purpose," he said, "but there are some who do."

In the case of forged checks, he said, these need to be turned directly over to the Sheriff's Office as forgery is a felony offense. The same goes for stolen checks.

Additionally, Porterfield said, hot checks totaling more than $200 can be filed as felonies, even if more than one check was written.

Wright said if several hot checks totaling more than $200 are written in a 90 day period, the writer can be charged with a felony offense and could spend up to a year in prison on the charge.

But, he said, the whole idea is to avoid court whenever possible and get the person who wrote the hot check to pay up.

He further stated payments made toward bad checks do not negate the crime committed. The offense, he said, occurred when the check was first written.

And, he went on, with today's technology, fingerprints can be lifted from checks, giving the legal community one more way to track down the author of the bad paper.

Writing hot checks is a misdemeanor offense with up to a $1,000 fine and the possibility of a year in jail.

Checks where the payment has been stopped can be hot checks, but have to be looked at on a case by case basis.

If a merchant get stuck with a bad two-party check, they have to go through small claims court to try and get their money back, as these are not considered hot checks.