Maryland Bail Bonds Blog

A bail bondsman's primary responsibility in Maryland is to ensure that the defendant comes back to court to face trial. What we have been noticing time and time again is that "bail bondsmen" are bailing people out without a care in the world as to whether they appear or not. They are only concerned with attempting to collect their fees.

Lets take a look at a specific example:
Mr. Bail Bonds posted a $50,000 bail for a defendant named Kimberly Jones (reference case number: 1c00342840) Her case history information can be seen below:

We would like you to take notice that this defendant has failed to appear for trial on 07/21/2011. In other words she has an open warrant for her arrest and potentially poses a danger to herself or the general public.

Let's now take a gander at the civil case that was filed on 09/23/2011 by the bail bondsman against the above mentioned defendant. The bail bonds company is suing the defendant for $4,500 (or the remainder of the 9% fee that was never paid):

What can we deduct from these images? This defendant has been MIA for over 2 months now and the primary focus here for the bondsman is collecting the remainder of the bail premium, and not recovering the fugitive. There are, of course, significant questions that arise from this:

-What, if anything, has the bondsman done to try and recover the defendant?
-Why is the civil suit (filed 2 months after the date of the FTA) only for $4,500 when the defendant forfeited on $50,000?
-Does the bail bondsman care that $50,000 is at stake? Or, is it not their money at risk?
-Is this how we want to serve the general public as Maryland Bail Bondsmen?

It's pretty easy to see what's going on here. And this is just one example of many that unfortunately take place in this industry. Posting bail bonds for 1% down is not the crime here. Complete disregard or interest for making sure your defendants appear, and solely caring about the fee is at the core of the problems that plagues the business as a whole.

On September 23, 2002 George Earl failed to appear for court in Baltimore City. Our warrant apprehension team spent a tremendous amount of time and money searching for Mr. Earl. Their investigation would lead them from Baltimore to Ohio, Kentucky and finally West Virginia where they ultimately located and arrested him.

During the apprehension Mr. Earl stated that he was already arrested in West Virginia (in 2003) for the warrants from Baltimore and that he had paperwork from Baltimore stating that they will not extradite him from West Virginia. Mr. Earl had three outstanding warrants, one from Baltimore County for misdemeanor possession of cocaine, one in Baltimore City for driving uninsured and another from Baltimore City for violation of probation on a drug charge backing up a one year suspended sentence.

Big Boyz Bail Bonds had an obligation to the District Court of Maryland to produce him in court even if it has been almost ten years later and no matter where he was in the United States it is our job to locate and produce him for court. I think it is quite clear that our Maryland Bail Bonds Company takes its job as Bail Bondsmen very seriously and will go to great lengths to locate and produce our fugitive defendants no matter where they run and hide.

Our warrant apprehension team locates and returns fugitives from all across the United States and has even located and caused the arrest of fugitives in Canada as well as Kenya, Africa.

To our surprise, another Baltimore Bail Bonds company posted bail for the defendant even considering he had been on the run for over 9 years! All we can say to them is good luck! Below is a deatiled case history:

Many of the cases that skip bail for us are instances where defendants appear for court and are found guilty, but told by the circuit court judge that they can report back later to begin serving time. For bail bondsmen who are actually liable for the bonds they post this is an unfortunate fact.

From what we understand this is something between judges and attorneys that make the attorney "look better" for their client. Even though the attorney did not win the case, they were able to work out an agreement with the judge which allotted the defendant time to get everything in order before checking in to the respective detention center. In some instances, this can mean buying time to pack up your things and get out of town.

This, to a legitimate Maryland Bail Bonds Company, causes many headaches and makes our fugitive recovery agents work overtime to locate defendants who fail to appear for sentencing hearing. One might think that bail bonds companies in Maryland would unite together and try to enforce new legislation and require the possibility of a new bond to be posted in order to come back for sentencing.

The reason Maryland Bail Bondsmen do not unite on this idea is because over 80% of the companies out there are not liable for the bonds that they post. So what do they care if the defendant doesn't appear? It's somebody else's problem. Here is a parramount instance where the bail bonds system fails and is why so many people view this industry in a negative light.

When a defendant shows up for court and they are found guilty it is a completely different circumstance than when we posted the original bond. Initially, you are innocent until proven guilty. When you are guilty, you are guilty!

Of course there are convicted people out there who actually use their time accordingly to get their finances in order and make sure their families are ok while they are in jail. But in many cases these situations produce unnecessary warrants that add to an already high total of open warrants thanks primarily to the non-liable bail bondsmen that don't care to look for them.

Maryland Bail Bondsmen are in the business of making sure that the defendants we bail out appear for court. If we fail to produce the defendants for court we become responsible for the total amount of the bond we posted. Therefore we take a high volume of risk and have been burned by defendants of ours before. See our wanted fugitives page as an example.

Recently Big Boyz Bail Bonds bailed out a defendant on an arrest warrant from 2003 out of Washington County Maryland. When the family member came in to post the bail they told us that the defendant had an outstanding warrant for Frederick County Maryland. When we did a record check for the defendant, we noticed that a bondsman posted a $2,500 bond for this defendant in August of 2002 and he failed to appear for court in February of 2003.

The bondsman who posted this bail was held responsible to pay the district court of Maryland for Frederick County $2,500 in August of 2003. Fortunately for this bondsman, our bail bonds company contacted the insurance company associated with this bail and informed them of the defendant's incarceration. Due to this, the bail bondsman will be reimbursed the $2,500 in a matter of some time.

Even though the bail bonds business in Maryland is extremely competitive we think it is still important to help other bondsmen, whom are liable for their bond forfeitures, and inform them of fugitive defendants that become incarcerated in other jurisdictions. Big Boyz Bail Bonds takes great pride in performing a legitimate service for our community so tax payers don't have to pay out more money to a potential pre-trial supervision program in lieu of bail bonds.

As mentioned in previous blog entries on apprehending fugitive subjects in Maryland, not everybody misses court on purpose. Or so they say. In this video below, the defendant claims he received a summons for a different date then shown to him by the bounty hunter. Nonetheless, a warrant has been issued for the defendant and therefore the warrant must be served at any cost.

Of course, not every case is clear cut and dry, and the defendant doesn't always cooperate with the arresting bounty hunter. As seen in this video, fugitive recovery agent for a Maryland bail bonds company "Big Boyz Bail Bonds" has to get aggressive and lay down the law for the irritable defendant.

In the video, the defendant is accusing the Maryland bounty hunter that he is not a cop. This is of course a true fact; however Agent Orlando (seen in the video) never claims to be one. But because he is a Maryland State licensed surety agent and was issued a warrant by a Maryland Judge he has the right to apprehend the targeted subject.

Due to the high volume of bails that Big Boyz Bail Bonds posts on a yearly basis we see a high volume of bond forfeitures for all sorts of reasons. Because of this, we plan on putting up many more fugitive recovery videos in the near future so you can see firsthand what it's like to be a bounty hunter in Baltimore Maryland. Stay tuned.