If you’ve got a bad check on file with the Fourth Circuit Court District’s Bad Check Unit, you’ve got until March 1 to make it good.
Beyond that date, the District Attorney’s Office will release indictments to the Leflore County Sheriff’s Office for immediate arrest and prosecution if a bad check remains unpaid.
According to District Attorney Dewayne Richardson, some 75 to 100 indictments are handed down in the district — including Leflore, Washington and Sunflower counties — each year.
“Once a year we give people fair warning,” Richardson said. “We also typically send out notices to every individual we have on file. It shouldn’t come as a surprise to many people.”
Richardson said his office usually will send three to five letters before sending someone to the grand jury.
The Bad Check Unit is supported by Mississippi Code 97-19-55, better known as the Mississippi Bad Check Law and first passed in 1988. The law authorizes DAs across the state to assist victims of bad check writers to recover restitution. It also makes writing bad checks of $100 or more and not making recompense a felony, punishable by up to three years in prison or a $3,000 fine.
Richardson said the maximum penalty has only been applied in one case that he’s aware of in recent years — a particularly egregious fraud case in which the bad check writer took advantage of a vulnerable population over a long period of time.
But there is no statute of limitations on bad checks under Mississippi law, and anyone who has been turned in is subject to prosecution, regardless of how long ago the check was written.
Unpaid checks that linger in the system accrue fines, and if the bad check writer is indicted, he or she may also accrue court costs.
“We have thousands of checks on file,” Richardson said. “We try to work with the check writer. The overall goal is for merchants or community members to get their money back.”
The responsibility of the business owner is also laid out in the statute.
“Business owners are required to notify the check writer by certified mail that their check has been returned unpaid,” Richardson said. “After notifying, they can then submit a packet with my office to request that we prosecute or collect on checks owed.”
Richardson said that for each of the past two months, his office has reissued roughly $30,000 to victims as a result of collecting on bad checks.
In addition to helping victims get restitution, the Bad Check Unit can guide those who have written bad checks on how to make repayment and cover fines.
Those who are uncertain whether they are on file for writing a bad check or who might not know exactly how much they need to pay for restitution should contact Check Unit Director Markeda Brown at (662) 378-2106, email badcheckcollector@gmail.com or visit www.msdeltada.com.
• Contact Kathryn Eastburn at 581-7235 or keastburn@gwcommonwealth.com.
The original version of this article had an incorrect date for the initial enactment of the Bad Check Law.
