Keep Bailing

Tom Rice, Field Investigator, and Kimberly Morgan, Supervising Investigator, with the California Department of Insurance (DOI), Investigations Division, addressed the September monthly meeting of the Orange County Bail Agent’s Association (OCBAA). The Department of Insurance is the state regulatory agency for the California bail industry.

Mr. Rice reviewed the division’s main objectives to protect consumers and to promote a healthy bail industry. He noted that the agency is complaint driven and complaints can be originated via an online complaint form or a call to the local office. He recommended that Orange County bail agents assist in policing their industry by filing such complaints because the DOI has no other way of knowing that there are problems. “We don’t know what’s going on in the bail industry without you guys,” said Rice.

As a whole, the bail industry is concerned with bondsman who are perpetrating bail scams and breaking the law. Not only is this a nuisance to our business, it is fraudulent to the consumer. At the Orange County Central Jail Complex, soliciting outside the jail by unlicensed agents and by agents offering illegally low rates is a real problem. Read more »