Unit to focus on bad checks

Solicitor's effort might resolve backlog

By Diane Knich

The Post and Courier

Friday, February 20, 2009

The Charleston County Sheriff's Office has more than 16,000 outstanding bench warrants for bad-check writers, with 22 of them for just one person.

Maj. John Clark said the office could use the relief that will likely come from a new Worthless Check Unit that 9th Circuit Solicitor Scarlett Wilson plans to open in about six weeks.

Wilson said she has been pushing for the unit for about a year, and finally is able to launch it after Charleston County Council this week approved the use of 1,000 square feet of county office space and $21,000 for technology start-up costs.

Once open, people and businesses that receive worthless checks can submit them to the unit along with a complaint. The unit will transfer the responsibility of collection from the victim to the Solicitor's Office, she said.

"The Sheriff's Office alone could keep the unit busy," Clark said. Violations of check laws make up about 36 percent of 44,000 outstanding bench warrants. But the new unit will serve all law enforcement offices in the county.

Wilson said she wants to open the unit first to see "people being made whole who provided goods and services and haven't been paid for it." She also wants to try to resolve worthless check problems outside the criminal justice system if possible. "If we can do it without making the person who wrote it into a criminal, that's good, too," she said.

The Solicitor's Office will cover the unit's initial operating expenses of about $75,000 for the first six months, Wilson said. It will have two full-time employees who likely will collect on 5,000 checks in the first year.

It should be self-supporting after the first six months, Wilson said. If it's not, she'll close it. The unit will support itself by levying hefty fees on people who write bad checks.

The Solicitor's Office would collect $50 to $150 for each check, depending on the amount of the check.

On top of the fee to the Solicitor's Office, the check writer would have to pay a $30 fee to the business or person who received the check and $41 to the county.

Under the proposed fee structure, a person who passed a worthless check worth for more than $1,000 would pay $221 in fees.

County Councilman Vic Rawl, council's representative on the Criminal Justice Coordinating Committee, said council agreed to contribute the money and space because bad check cases are "a load on the criminal justice process at the magistrate level."

David Coker, Charleston County's chief magistrate, said he hears about 200 bad check cases each month in his courtroom alone.

Coker, one of 19 county magistrates, said he thinks the new unit would be helpful. The Sheriff's Office has a huge backlog of warrants on older check cases, he said. If the unit handled new cases, the Sheriff's Office and magistrates could clear out the backlog, he said.