Pokerth players are mostly dumb niggers12/23/2023 Dog, like many bounty hunters, was a freelance contractor, hired by bondsmen to track down clients who skipped court. They all knew his A&E reality show, in which he kicked in doors and pepper-sprayed fugitives for bail bondsmen around the country. People edged in for handshakes and pictures. His sunglasses sat on top of his pink forehead. His blond mullet flowed down the shoulders of his flame-embroidered leather jacket. I turned around to see Dog the Bounty Hunter entering the room, cameras swirling around him. “And a lot of times those cases don’t even get filed-” His eyes drifted toward the middle distance behind me. You figure that’s at least $5,000” in the bank. “You make the most money off domestic violence, cuz the bail’s high. The man in the gray suit continued: “I write real A+ stuff,” he said. If you don’t, he will owe the court $30,000. To the bondsman you pay a nonrefundable fee-usually 10 percent of the bail-and he promises the court that you will show up for trial. If you don’t have that much cash, you have two choices: sit in jail and wait for your trial, or hire a bail bondsman. If you have that kind of money, you can give it to the court and get it back when you show up for trial. For drug possession, let’s say the judge sets bail at $30,000. Shortly afterward you appear before a judge who decides whether to let you out before your trial (only people charged with the most heinous crimes are denied bail altogether) and, if so, what collateral it will take to make sure you don’t bolt. Say you get arrested for drug possession and wind up in jail. The business model is pretty straightforward. Here’s my credit card number.” He smiled and took a sip from his beer, nodding happily. When he told the driver’s mom she would have to pay him a $10,000 fee to get her son out of jail, she said, “No problem. I was confused-was I to realize that this was a boon? He quickly explained that normally, bail for a DUI was $5,000, but since it involved an injury, the amount automatically jumped to $100,000. “So him and a girlfriend both get kinda messed up.” He beamed. A college student went out drinking and crashed his car into a fence, he explained. “Sometimes you get real lucky.” He told me about the first bond he ever wrote in the cheerful, blow-by-blow manner of a poker player recounting a winning hand. “I like it,” he said buoyantly, taking a sip of his beer. “So how do you like the industry?” I asked a clean-shaven man in a shiny gray suit who looked to be about 30. Not really, I discovered when I arrived at the welcome reception. I’d even grown a mustache for the event, thinking it would help me blend in a little-bondsmen have mustaches, don’t they? It was a bit of a letdown from what I’d been anticipating-all-night blackjack sessions with bondsmen and bounty hunters telling tales from the street over stiff drinks. As I walked through the smoky slots area I saw a man with a PBUS lanyard doing an extremely forced I’m-having-fun dance with his assistant while a casino employee showed them how to play the one-armed bandit. A sign at the entrance announced that the casino’s dolphin just had a baby and we would be able to see it soon. In the courtyard, flames licked the late-winter air to the rhythm of a tribal drum every hour, on the hour. The sidewalk out front was littered with cards bearing phone numbers and pictures of naked women. The largest annual gathering of bail bondsmen in the country-the convention of the Professional Bail Agents of the United States, or PBUS-was slotted between Dunkin’ Donuts and Elk Camp 2013 at the Mirage Resort and Casino, a tall, shiny structure shaped like an open book and set against replicas of the Colosseum and Eiffel Tower on Las Vegas’ Strip.
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