Bail Bond News and Pretrial Release Articles

"I profit from people's mistakes," said John Morgan, one of the owners of the Alex Padilla Bail Bonds, in a recent National Geographic Channel special.

His comment sums up the business of bail bonds.

Matt Wilton, the manager of the Eureka office of Alex Padilla Bail Bonds, said most people who get in trouble for the first time don't know how the bail bond business works.

"Different states have different laws," Wilton said. "In California we go through the Department of Insurance."

The Department of Insurance regulates the bail bonds industry in the state.

Prospective bail bond agents go to a seminar-type class put on by the California Bail Agents Association and are certified upon passing a test, which is usually held about a month after the class. The classes also include a security guard certification, which is required to perform fugitive recovery, or bounty hunting, in California.
 

Because Wilton is with a popular chain of bail bonds offices, it's easier for him to operate in the area. The SBC phonebook lists 10 different bail bond companies in Humboldt County.

"If you wanted to open Joe Blow Bail bonds, you'd have to have the collateral in the bank to cover every bond you have in hand," Wilton said. "Right now I have about $400,000 in bonds in my bag. If I wanted to open up my own shop I'd have to have $400,000 in the bank to cover those bonds."

Wilton said the bonds are checks from an insurance company that he's authorized to sign.

Collateral is part of the bond business, but Wilton said it's rarely used in his office. He said that with collateral a person with a $100,000 has a co-signer put up a house or property worth at least the amount of the bail. If one court date is missed, or even if the person is a few minutes late, it could go down as a failure to appear and a bench warrant is issued.

"Then the Sheriff's Department is looking for you," Wilton said. "And then you'll have me looking for you."

Once the bond is forfeited, the bond company has 180 days to put the person back in jail.

"Within that 180 days, if I don't find you and put you back in jail, then I call your co-signer," Wilton said. "Because I'm going to get a bill from (the insurance company) for $100,000. So I'll call your co-signer and say, 'Look, I'm going to sell your house, keep $100,000 and give you whatever's left to cover the bond. That's how it works."

What if the person is caught and returned to custody within the 180 days?

"If I catch you in 180 days and put you back in jail, then my bond (and collateral) is cleared," Wilton said. "I mean, then if there's still a couple hundred bucks left I'll let you make payments or bill your co-signer for a couple hundred bucks."

Wilton said he does work with customers to set up payment arrangements, but there are a lot of qualifications involved.

"You would pay me 10 grand to get you out of $100,000. That's your premium," Wilton said. "If it was just some B.S. charge, you were a good guy, you had a job, your co-signer had a job, you had a residence, everybody hunky dory and everybody local then I can probably take five grand down and let you make payments on the rest."

If the person makes all their court appearances and gets the matter cleared up, either way, that $10,000 would be all they had to pay.

"And it's not refundable," Wilton said. "A lot of people get confused and think that a bail agent works for the city, the county or the state. No. The money is not refundable."

Wilton said he can sometimes get a feel if the person is going to let out on their own recognizance and turns them away to save them money.

"Sometimes people call me and say, 'I really don't have enough money to get out, I got my brother who has a house and money who will co-sign for me,'" Wilton said. "That's where I have to say, 'I would really like to make money from you, but I really don't want you to waste money either.' I've been in this business long enough, and by the looks of the charges I understand what's going to happen. I tell them that they may want to just sit it out until their bail/own recognizance hearing."

Wilton said everybody's charges are different and that there's stories behind those charges.

"I'm not judge or jury, I don't decide whether a person's guilty or not," Wilton said. "I create a relief for local taxes and I'm promising the jail that this person will show up to court."

Brenda Gainey of the Humboldt County Sheriff's Department said deputies and detectives rarely deal with bail bondsmen or bounty hunters, but correction officers see bail bondsmen on nearly a daily basis.

Gainey said a lot of the first-time inmates ask questions and advice on how the bail bond business works.

"They ask us all the time, 'Who should I use?'" Gainey said.

But by law, corrections officers cannot recommend which bail bond company to use. There is a list of all of the county bail bonds company on a list next to the jail phones.

"We give them (inmates) an overview on how the bail business works," Gainey said. "They get the details from the company."

The one phone call is a myth, Gainey said. Corrections officers are required to let inmates complete at least three phone calls. Corrections officers more than likely will allow the inmate to make more, especially if there's a good chance that the inmate will be bailed out.

"We're trying to keep our inmate count down," Gainey said. "So if there's a chance they may get out, we keep them on the phone."

If a bail is skipped, meaning a person misses their court dates and can't be found, the bounty hunters step in.

"The title 'bounty hunter' has really left a bad taste in a lot of people's mouths in the business," Wilton said. "When you go through the class they tell you, 'That's not proper anymore.'"

Wilton attributes the negative connotation to movies and TV shows that portray bounty hunters as fearless, gun-toting vigilantes kicking down people's doors.

"Everyone says, 'I want to be a bond agent," so I ask why. 'Because I want to kick doors down and hunt people down and take cars and stuff,'" Wilton said. "That's not what it's about."

The term used now is fugitive recovery teams.

Wilton said that he does most of the fugitive recovery in the Humboldt County area himself and that most of it is watching motels and following leads.

"If it's too far then I can't afford to be away from this office," Wilton said. "So we call down south (Sacramento) and we have Leonard Padilla, who is the father of Alex Padilla, and is the world's No. 1 bounty hunter."

On a recent National Geographic Channel special featuring Leonard Padilla, he said he's captured 6,000 fugitives in the 30 years he's been a bounty hunter and only six have slipped through his fingers.

"He's gotten the title of 'Godfather of bail,'" Wilton said. "I don't think I'd work for anyone else in the business."

Padilla was one of the candidates for governor in the 2003 recall election.

Wilton looks at the bail business as a public service.

"The people I deal with are not all bad people," Wilton said. "Everybody thinks I'm letting drug dealers back out on the street, that's not the case. We bail people out so they can get back to their families. We bail people out so they can deal with their matter in a professional way. When you go to court in a big, orange jumpsuit, it kind of says guilty."
 

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