A bail bonds agent pleaded guilty today to illegally
soliciting clients from Orange County Jail.
Kenneth Lance Hendrick, 50,
of Mission Viejo, was promptly sentenced to a year in jail and three years probation, and the California Department of Insurance will revoke the James Morris Bail Bonds' employee's bail bonds
license.
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Between March 4-Dec. 6, 2010, Hendrick convinced
11 different Orange County Jail inmates to notify him when other jailbirds needed bail. One inmate was enlisted to specifically recruit clients while still in custody for Hendrick, who another time recommended a lawyer for a potential client. All of this violates state law.
Hendrick today copped to felony counts
of a bail agent having an arrangement with a person incarcerated in jail
to inform and notify defendant of the arrest, two felony counts of a
bail agent recommending the name of an attorney to an arrestee, and one
felony count of a bail agent allowing a non-bail licensee to solicit
bail on the agent's behalf.
Perhaps he learned it's not so bad inside from his boss, James Morris, who last June pleaded guilty in a separate but related case to counts that earned him six months in jail and the loss of his bail bonds license. Morris had actually paid inmates who got him new clients inside.
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.