Hollywood Bail Bonds Interview Transcript

 

RJ: This is Richard Jacobs from MYDUIAttorney.org. I am here today with Francisco Rodriguez. He’s the founder and owner of Hollywood Bail Bonds, a bail bond services in the Los Angeles, CA area. And Francisco has been in the bail bond industry for over 13 years. Welcome Francisco. How are you going?

 

FR: I’m well. Thanks for asking. How are you doing?

 

RJ: Good, thanks for taking the time. I appreciate it very much. I usually get to talk to attorneys so it’s nice to talk to someone else, bail bondsmen.

 

FR: Give you a different twist on things.

 

RJ: Definitely, yes. My first question is an easy one, but maybe not to most people but what is a bail bond?

 

FR: A bail bond is a guarantee to the court that the defendant make all appearances associate with the case prior to the court ruling. Generally there’s a predetermined dollar amount that’s been set by the court, a bail bond is not a fee that is paid to free to defendant from his obligation to appear. It is however a guarantee that he will appear. Therefore, if someone is out on bail and fails to go to court, that person could have picked up an additional case. First based on the original arrest and the second for failing to appear.

 

RJ: Okay, so bail bonds essentially is you’re being asked to put money up for the defendant to make sure you show up for court and if you don’t not only do you forfeit the bond but you may take on a second charge which is failure to appear, is that right?

 

FR: That can be the case, yes.

 

RJ: Okay, I just wanted to make sure that was right. So what prompted you to get into this business so long ago?

 

FR: Well, there was a general need out here and like any other small business to make a business succeed and grow you want to fulfill a need that exists. At the time that we came along I had friends that were in the bail bond industry that were distressed by the state of things. Of the industry as it existed in that time. With that in mind, we started Hollywood bail bonds. There were numbers of people that were being arrested, as there still are at any given time in Los Angeles county, you have 20,000 people in jail. So there was a need we were attempting to fulfill the needs brought on by all those arrests.

 

RJ: You said that at any one time there’s 20,000 people that have what, just been arrested?

 

FR: Well, 20,000 that are in custody in LA (Los Angeles) county. That doesn’t mean that you were arrested last night. It could mean you were arrested two or three weeks ago and were incapable of making bail so there you are.

 

RJ: That’s quite a lot of people.

 

FR: Yeah.

 

RJ: Alright so getting back to the bail bond itself. Maybe the best way is let me create a scenario and maybe you can walk me through it. So let’s say a man’s been arrested and he’s charged with possession a controlled substance like cocaine. So he finds out and tells his family and the jailer says that the bail bond is 10,000 dollars. So what happens from there?

 

FR: The arrestee and the family have a couple of options. And the bail for possession of a minor amount of a controlled substance such as cocaine is indeed $10,000. They can wait it out and try their luck in front of judge, the objective being to try to convince the court to lower the bail amount or eliminate the need for bail altogether. Police has 72 hours, holidays and weekends not included, to get an arrestee in front of a judge. So you might have to wait a few days to pursue that option. In fact, the worst possible day of the year to get arrested would probably be like the night before thanksgiving, because the courts are going to be closed Friday and then you’ve got the weekend, then your 72 hour clock starts. And that’s one option, wait it out and try to give a judge a fair shot.

 

RJ: If I may ask, probably the worst time to get arrested would probably be a Friday evening, because you have to wait out the weekend.

 

FR: Yeah, other than special circumstances like the one I just gave which is Wednesday night prior to Thanksgiving because Thanksgiving which is Thursday and the following day which is Friday are both court holidays in California. So now instead of the weekend, you have 4 days before the clock starts. So in essence you can end up sitting in the jail for a week before you got yourself in front of a judge to try to plead your case as you why you shouldn’t have to pay bail.

 

RJ: Sorry to interrupt, go ahead.

 

FR: So that’s one option. Hang tough and see how you far in front of a judge. The downside of that, by the way, is if the judge doesn’t eliminate it or reduce it and you don’t make bail right there in the court, then you go into county jail and they are so busy down there that you can expect to be stuck at least another day just to be aware that they got you. Update their records and know they’ve got your body, and then we can go in and post bond.

 

Now an additional option from the get-go is if you have the ability to deposit the entire $10,000 cash to the jail to secure your release. The advantage of that option is that you get your full $10,000 back. The bad side of that is that most people can’t lay their hands on $10,000 cash promptly enough and if they can, they may choose not to have it over with the police. Put me on that list. And thirdly and the option that’s most used, they call a bondsman, Hollywood Bail Bonds for example. A bail bondsman is going to charge a percentage of the full bail amount, typically that’s 10% and the 10% is nonrefundable. When qualifying someone for a bail bond, the bail bondsman is going to look for ties to the community and that generally means getting persons other than the arrestee to cosign. The cosigner would have to be gainfully employed or a property owner. The days of bail bondsman accepting TVs or cars as collateral are pretty much gone.

 

RJ: So that’s – is that kind of an urban myth that you can pawn jewelry or cars or things like that…

 

FR: Well, there was a time that that was the scenario and the bail bond office looked like a pawn shop. I suspect there is somebody out there who might, but using cars for example, most people think, or many people think that you can go and give a bail bondsman your pink slip and secure your release, but the reality in California is you can give me the pink slip Wednesday night in essence handing me the title of the car. Thursday morning you can go down to the DMV and apply for another one.

 

So bail bondsman would eventually wise up to that trick, and generally, and in fact, the current scenario is actually better for the consumer which is just get your friends or co-workers or relatives to co-sign and then you’re not parting with your car. You’re not parting with your jewelry. The people that love you and trust you are guarantying you. – Are guaranteeing that you know. In fact, one of the phrases is that if they don’t trust you, we don’t trust you.

 

RJ: That’s true. If no one will speak for you, how can you ask a bail bondsman to speak for you?

 

FR: Right.

 

RJ: Okay, so of the people that you help, are there any commonalities? Are you dealing with more men or women? Younger people or older?

 

FR: Well, males lead the pack by a country mile. Of those that we’ve bonded out, we’ve bonded thousands of people out of jail. Males are probably 95% to 5% female. The males are almost always under 35. We maybe 75, 80 percent are going to be young males and I mean it just goes with the territory. A young male is out there drinking and driving recklessly or partying or testosterone raging getting into a bar fight and things of that nature. So primarily males. Primarily young males. We pretty much pull people out reflective of the populations of the city you are in. So in Los Angeles, we’ve got a large Hispanic population and as such a large number of the bonds that we do are people with Spanish surnames.

 

RJ: Okay, just out of curiosity, what’s the biggest bond you guys have ever done?

 

FR: The biggest bond we did was maybe two years ago. This was a very wealthy person, and his bail had been set at 11 million dollars.

 

RJ: Wow, that’s crazy.

 

FR: He owned a 25 million dollar piece of property, and he had a large inheritance. For him it was no big deal.

 

RJ: Well, that’s true. Okay. So when someone gets arrested, who is it that’s calling usually? The person? Their family? And where are they calling from? The jail? Their home?

 

FR: If it’s the arrestee that’s calling us, well then obviously they’re calling from the jail. That sometimes occurred if you’re in a jail if you get a nice jailer he may hand you a phone book and then you can try your luck at going through the phone book at finding bail bondsmen. More often than not, it’s a friend or family member because when you get arrested, the first thing you do is call your parents, call your friends and ask them to help you get out. A lot of time people don’t want their parents to know they got arrested, so we’re dealing with friends and/or their relatives.

 

RJ: You talked about this briefly. I guess we can go down a laundry list. So what’s needed to qualify for a bail bond? What’s all the ways you can think of that people can post collateral for a bond?

 

FR: Well, what’s needed for a bail bondsman, is we’re looking for ties to the community. So if you call me up and depending on the size of the bond, let’s say we’re talking about the scenario you created where the bail is 10,000 dollars. Well, then you give me one gainfully employed person, and by gainfully employed I mean someone who works at the post office. Not someone who’s flipping burgers somewhere.

 

Because I want a job that they’re not going to jump up and run away from if they’re on the hook for 10 Gs as I will be. So to qualify for the bond you need the backup as the bonds get bigger you need more back up. If you’re talking about 50,000, we’re talking about more than one co-signer. 100,000 and up, then we start looking at real estate and/or other cash collateral. Using that big bond I mentioned a few minutes ago, that one was secured with real estate.

 

RJ: Okay, then getting out of jail in general, and this is kind of similar to what you and somewhat not, what are some of the ways that you can get out of jail Including getting bonded out?

 

FR: Well, in California, there are 5 legal ways to get out of jail. The first most common that many of us have experienced is simply a citation. As in you’re driving down the freeway, the highway patrol pulls you over and gives you a ticket, you sign it. It gives you an approximate period in which to return and you do. And if you don’t do that by the way, then you will get a warrant for your arrest, and you just upped the game from a simple ticket to whatever the bail bond is associated with that failure to appear.

 

Secondly, if you get lucky, you get released on your own recognizance. That means that very same highway patrol, whatever you did didn’t merit a ticket. He arrests you, he takes you down to the local police station, surrenders you there, and then you get lucky again and the situation might be that they are so crowded that they would like less bodies and the offense you did is not so horrible.

 

For instance, your first driving under the influence, first time being arrest for drunk driving, and if nobody got hurt, well, then they’re probably going to release on your own recognizance, which means they’ll give you a date and time to show up at court. The third and fourth ways to get out are a couple we alluded to already, which is cash, bond, and a surety bonds. So you can go into the court or give the jail the full cash amount. And you’ll be released. And if you don’t show, they’re going to keep your cash and they’re going to come looking for you.

 

Or a surety bond, they ask someone like Hollywood Bail Bonds and we make a guarantee to the court. The advantage of the surety bonds is that it’s less money out of your pocket and we’ll do things like remind you of when your court date is and we’re a lot more compassionate. So if I get a letter from the court telling me that you missed court, I’m not going to run over there and try to surrender. I’m going to call you up and say what happened. More times than not, it’s a court flub than it is the person that failed to go to court. They may have given them the wrong date, the wrong time, the wrong court room, etc, etc.

 

And lastly you can get out of jail in California with something called a property bond. One famous case that happened many years ago was when Marlon Brando’s son was up on a murder charge and Marlon Brando went into court and succeeded in posting his estate as collateral. He allowed the court to put a lien on the property to pull his son out of jail.

 

Now that is rarely done. The courts don’t regard themselves as real estate brokers and it’s a tough sale. And it’s a little pricy because now you have to pay the lawyer to go in there and argue to try to get the court to receive it. So it is probably the rarest way that I know of to get out of jail.

 

RJ: Okay, so when you pay someone’s bail bond, you’re on the hook, because you’re going to lose all of that money if they don’t show, so you become kind of like, well, I don’t want to say babysitter but in a way you do, you have to make sure they show up, make sure they appear…

 

FR: Well, when you hire a bail bondsman, in essence you have hired him to be your jailer. The difference is he’s dealing with you on a very long leash, so he’s responsible to make sure that you make all your appearances associated with that case. And again, one of the advantages to hiring a bail bondsman is that he’s out there working on your behalf. So if you don’t make court, there could be a bunch of reasons. If you saw the movie Jackie Brown that was filmed in one of our affiliate offices, they have a bounty hunter on the phone who’s telling someone on the phone that if you don’t show up at court, you better be in jail, in the hospital, or dead.

 

Well, that is a truism if you’re dealing with someone who intentionally missed court. But if you’re driving to court and you’ve got a car that dies on you, well, we’ll help you get there, explain to the judge what happened, show the receipt from the mechanic that fixed your car and keep you out of jail. Because that’s our job, to keep you out of jail for the duration until the judge rules.

 

RJ: Okay, so if someone doesn’t appear though, do you use they call them bounty hunters?

 

FR: They all are called bounty hunters, recovery agents, gorillas, and there are indeed people whose job it is to pick you up if you fail to make your appearance in the court. For us, that’s a very last commitment. We are in the business of freeing people, not arresting people. But there are trained pros whose job it is to go pick you up and take you to court if you are indeed blowing off court.

 

RJ: So when you deal with someone that you’ve give a bond for, when does your relationship with them end? When do you get your money back?

 

FR: No one gets their money back when a bondsman pulls you out of jail. He hands the jail a piece of paper, so we’re not actually walking in there. If your bail is $10,000 and you paid me $1,000, I’m not walking in there and handing a jailer $10,000. I’m walking in there and handing him a piece of paper that guarantees that I will pay $10,000 if you don’t go to court and I can’t get you to court. By the way in California, I have 185 days to find you and surrender you, and that 185 is based on 6 months, or 180 days to find you, and then they allow for mailing from the court notifying me of your failure to appear, and so the extra five days. Our relationship ends when the judge rules, even if the judge does not state that the bond is exonerated. When he rules and says okay, you’re innocent, your guilty, what have you, guilt or innocence is none of my business, but once he rules, our relationship is ended. The bond should automatically be exonerated.

 

RJ: So exonerating the bond means a ruling from the judge saying that the bond is no longer necessary.

 

FR: Yeah, he’s supposed to make a statement to that effect. He’s supposed to specifically say that the bond is exonerated. He may fail to do that, but if he rules, and these days you’re getting judges who are a little more slick about it, so what they’ll do is they’ll say okay, sir, I find you guilty of this charge but I am not going to – pardon me, let me correct. He says, I will rule in two weeks. He’s going to give you time to go home and get your affairs in order. What he’s doing is he’s keeping the bail bondsman on the hook. You know you’re going to be found guilty. You know you’re going to spend the next year in jail because you burned down the candy store, and he’s giving you time to go get your life in order. You might say baloney, I’m out of here, and the bail bondsman is still on the hook. As opposed to the judge says I find you guilty, I sentence you to a year for burning down the candy store, but I’m going to give you two weeks to get your life in order. In that case, he rules and the bail bondsman is off the hook. If he didn’t rule, then the bail bondsman is still on the hook.

 

RJ: Have you had many cases where the bond is exonerated before they get to the ruling?

 

FR: Oh yeah, all the time. I just had one a couple of days ago of another very, very wealthy guy with his high-end Porsche who I expect had a little too much to drink and when the highway patrol attempted to pull him over, he turned it into a run. And in spite of what you see in the news, he succeeded in getting away. His problem is of course that while he was getting away he ran through a couple of red light cameras that picked up his license number. They arrested him a month or two after this little escapade. His bail was up there. It was well over $100,000 for evading police. And we took a piece of real estate as collateral but he is a prominent businessman and his attorney went in and argued this guy’s going nowhere we really don’t need a bail bond. It took a couple of visits to court by the judge exonerated bond but the case goes on.

 

RJ: Okay, so I don’t know if it’s at all possible to do, but do you hear any common story from the people you work with? Is there any commonality or is it all over the place?

 

FR: Well, the commonalities are domestic violence, and this goes across race lines, this goes across gender lines, and this goes across sexual preference lines. We’ll get husband and wife. Lesbian couple. Homosexual couple. People just can’t get along, and you know when they’re at home, someone might take a pop at somebody else, and these days courtesy of OJ Simpson, that bond used to be a $5,000 bond in Los Angeles, but going back to that first OJ case when he came out in the new where he was constantly hitting Nicole, cops would come, nothing would happen, after that, the bail went from $5,000 to $50,000.

 

RJ: 50?

 

FR: 50. So back then it would have cost you 500 if you hired a bondsman., Nowadays it will cost you $5,000. Other commonalities are of course DUIs. Those who go across race lines. Possession of controlled substances. People with disposable income sometimes like to do things that’ll get themselves arrested.

 

RJ: How about for DUIs, what’s the common – you said the first time there usually is no bond? When there is, what’s the range for those kinds of bonds?

 

FR: Your first DUI, typically would be a $2,500 bond. That’s presuming that you’re just over the legal limit and you haven’t had an accident. And you agree to breathalyzer or blood test or whatever. If you don’t agree, your bail will get kicked up to $5,000 for your first one. And again, for the first one – $2500, they’ll probably release you in 8 hours. If you don’t agree to the breathalyzer, they’re going to hang out to you and make bail on a $5000 bond unless they’re really crowded.

 

Now if you start getting into multiple, you’ve been arrest twice or three times, then it starts jumping up exponentially. 15,000 and so on and so forth. We had a fellow within the last year who was really ripped and on his way home, he hit 7 parked cars. His bail was over $100,000.

 

RJ: Do you run into the scenario very much where, I don’t know, an attorney for the prosecution says this person is a flight risk so let’s remand them to custody?

 

FR: Yes.

 

RJ: Is that common or pretty rare?

 

FR: It’s not rare but I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s common either. We being in Los Angeles, we’re 120 miles from Mexico, which means we have a lot of foreign nationals that get arrested. The court might look upon that as a potential for flight risk. Or maybe you have a history of not showing up. Or maybe it’s a strike case. If you’re out here, we have what they call strike cases that can turn into really, really significant jail time. And I know if I was facing 25 years to life, I’d be thinking about getting out of dodge.

 

RJ: It makes sense, yeah. This may be a question to laugh at, but what’s the effect that you see in people getting arrested, need to be bonded? What human insights have you gained from being a bondsman for so long?

 

FR: Well, as I guess you were aluding to, what’s obvious is that the person is going to be very depressed. I certainly would be. Nobody has a good time sitting in the slammer. It has its impact on relationships. It can be financially draining. Let’s go back to that simple DUI, where your bail is only 2500, and they did indeed release you on your own recognizance. Well, it doesn’t stop there.

 

The court’s going to make you pay court costs which is going to end up costing you for about 1500. They’re going to make you pay to go to a behavior modification places, and then you’re going to end up spending another 1500, $2000 there. When all is said and done-- And if you hire an attorney, well, boy you just kicked it up another $5,000. You can easily hit $10,000 on a simple DUI. You can sure impact your wallet, and if you’re a working stiff living from hand to mouth, it makes life very difficult for a minute.

 

RJ: I see, yeah. So when you’re dealing with bail bondsman, are there any things you should watch out for? How do you know if someone you’re dealing with is good or kind of sketchy? What do you look for?

 

FR: Well, Richard, that’s a profound question and particularly applicable in today’s market. There’s been a surge in bail bond companies in California. Were I searching I would be looking for reputation. I would be looking for word of mouth referrals. Someone who suffered through an unfortunate incident and how were they treated. I’ve had people come in here who you know, again, working stiffs, that relative might have been arrested on a $30,000 bond, and the bail bondsman accepted a fairly small deposit - $500, $700. Three days later, the bondsman arrested the defendant and puts them back, and basically cheated people who were poor to begin with out of their funds, so the old adage about if it’s too good to be true, it probably is.

 

So if someone who is negotiating their fee, which by the way is a felony in California, I would be cautious if they are a little too accommodating. You certainly want someone who is helpful , and accommodating but if it begins to smell fishy, well, then I would start asking for referrals. And lastly something that’s occurring a lot in California these days is sidewalk solicitations. Where you walking into the police station to find out what’s going on with your friend and somebody approaches you on the sidewalk and is offering to help you with a bail bond. Well, that’s a felony. So if the guy is breaking the law as soon as you meet him, it’s safe to say he’s not trustworthy.

 

RJ: I’ve been to court for traffic tickets, and I’ve seen them there a couple times. Bail bondsman standing outside saying hey, anyone that needs a bond, here’s a card.

 

FR: Yeah, I’ve seen them in the courtroom do it. And that’s a felony big time. You schmuck, what are you doing? But some of these guys are so dense that they simply don’t know that they’re breaking the law. Somehow they got the licenses and didn’t pay attention when they were getting their education.

 

RJ: Are there any other ways that bail bondsman are regulated that they can and can’t solicit? What can they do?

 

FR: Well, yeah, solicitation is a big part of where we’re watched. If we, when you start getting collateral, for instance, I have to promptly provide a re conveyance if let’s say you used a piece of property for a large bond. As soon as that court rules, I need to act promptly to re convey that property to you. If I get lax, the department of insurance is going to come down on me or whoever heavily. Same thing when you take things like cash collateral. Cash is something that a bail bondsman will accept as collateral, but you better, when that bond is exonerated, and they’ve paid you all the fees that were legally due to you, you better return it in full and do so promptly. And there are cases where some of these shady characters we’ve talked about have failed to do that, and they find themselves in jail.

 

RJ: Right, you talked about, it says that your fee is typically 10% of the bond amount. Is that by law? Because you said that bondsman negotiating, is that you have to do that?

 

FR: When a bail bonds company is established and you are arranging your license through the department of insurance, at that time, you determine what you’re going to charge, and 99% of them are going to establish it at 10%. So if you’re established 10% and somebody comes along and they say, well the guy down the street will go it for 8%, will you do it for 7, and you agree to that. Well, you’ve just committed a felony because you are registered with the department of insurance to do it at 10%.

 

RJ: Oh, once you set it, you can’t change it.

 

FR: Well, you can’t change it in the field. You can reapply at the department of insurance and discuss with them a change of terms. But no, you can’t walk in my door and tell me you got a better deal, can you do this? The answer is no, I can’t do that.

 

RJ: Well, that’s good to know. I’m sure, as in any industry, some people try to price shop, it’s good to common person doesn’t knows about bail bonds that you think people should know, or do you think we’ve covered most of the questions people would ask?

 

FR: Well, I think that the regular person who hasn’t stumbled into the legal system and suddenly finds themselves in a position where they need to get somebody out of jail, doesn’t have any understanding of what the protocol is, what they’re up against, what they’re rights are. I think we’ve touched on most of those. I can tell you that in California if you feel like a bail bondsman is taking advantage of you, you can contact the department of insurance. You’re going to get zero compassion from the police if you feel – you know, cause whoever you’re trying to pull out, they’re regarding as a criminal, so you go crying to them that the bail bond company took advantage of you, you’re not going to get a very sympathetic ear. You really need to take the complaint to the department of insurance.

 

RJ: This may be a very ignorant question, but why is everything that you do come through the department of insurance?

 

FR: Well, bail bonds are licensed by the department of insurance in California. We are, if you’re talking about surety bonds, we write for surety companies. We are in essence insurance companies. The difference between insurance companies and surety companies, insurance companies insure you based on something not occurring. You get auto insurance, and they’re going to make their money because they believe that the bulk of people are not going to get in accidents. Surety companies, conversely, is banking on something occurring, so we’re making our money based on thinking that you’re going to what you agreed to do, which is make all appearances in court. But it all comes under the umbrella of insurance.

 

RJ: Okay, I didn’t understand that. Alright. My last questions is for people listening to this interview or snippets of it, what makes Hollywood Bail Bonds or you a good choice for people that need help?

 

FR: We have a couple of things going for us. First and foremost are honesty and integrity. There are no complaints that have ever been filed against Hollywood Bail Bonds. Secondly, we have agents stationed around Los Angeles to serve you quicker. LA is a city that is 50 miles across, so I have agents in Hollywood, in the South Bay, in the San Fernando Valley, so if you call and you need help, one, we’ll go to you.

 

Most agencies want you to go to their office. Well, we’ll meet you at the police station. We’ll meet you at a convenient location close to your home. Some of my agents are females, so I’m not going to send them to your house at 3 in the morning, but they’ll meet you at the police station for instance, because you’re going to go pick up your friend anyway. So we have integrity. We have service. We have promptness.

 

Some companies will, you go in, you pay for a bond at 10 in the morning, you’ve sign the contract, you’ve given them the money, and you expect them to get up and go post that bond, which would seem fitting and appropriate. But they’re perspective is they want to wait until they have enough to justify the time so they’re going to wait for another 5 people which could stretch another 8 hours, another 9 hours. You don’t want your friend to sit in jail while these people get their butt in gear.

 

RJ: I didn’t think about that. Because as soon as you sign that contract, you want him to go and get him out of jail that second. Very good. I appreciate your time. I’ve learned a lot. I’m sure the people listening will learn a lot as well.

 

FR: Well, I certainly appreciate you taking the time to do it. I look forward to hearing what you put together from it.