I Gave a Check for Payment and it Bounced, Did I Commit a Crime

I often get people in my office that have issued a check to somebody where that check later bounced, and now they may be charged with passing a bad check. And the question usually is, is, well, am I guilty of passing that bad check? The answer to that is maybe.

If you pass that check knowing that that account was closed or that there were insufficient funds, then there's a possibility you could be found guilty of that charge. However, if you've made that payment and at the time there were funds, and those funds at some point— it took too long for the person you paid to deposit that check and there were no longer funds— if you were notified about that within those 10 days, you made good on that check, then You would not be guilty of that offense, and even if you were charged with it, we clearly, uh, have a defense. It's important that you hire an attorney right away if you've been charged with a crime like this, uh, in order to explore, uh, why this happened and what the defenses could possibly be.