How Bounty Hunters Work

In part two of their series on bail, Josh and Chuck talk about bail enforcement agents, a.k.a. bounty hunters.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should know
from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Yes, indeed,

(00:20):
I'm here. I did not skip bail. No, you didn't, Chuck,
And if you had, something would have happened to you. Yeah,
maybe a bounty hunter would have come after you. Part two, Josh,
our first ever. Well, I'm not true, but this is
a two part sweet Yeah, it's definitely not our first ever.
Thank you Steve reader, Steve who sent in the suggestion. Yeah,
and again, it was an MPR three part series on

(00:44):
bail in the United States that kind of kicked this
thing off. It's like I said, it's worth reading. Go
to MPR dot org and you can check it out.
I think you'd probably just type bail in their handy
search bar. Yeah. Um, but yeah. We we asked the
question at the end of the last podcast that came
out on Tuesday. Here it is Thursday. The question was

(01:06):
what happens when you skip bail? And, as we've just established,
you get a bounty hunter sicked on your Yes, in
many cases that is exactly what will happen, is a
bondsman will hire what they like to be referred to
as a bail enforcement agent. But of course we like
to call them bounty hunters because it's just a cooler name.

(01:27):
It is a way cooler name, and it's a name
that goes back, um several centuries, right at least one
or two. Well, sure, are you talking about the Old West? Yeah,
they had when the whole thing started was when um,
I believe in eighteen seventy three a Supreme Court case
Kramer versus Kramer, now Taylor versus Tainter, Taylor versus Tainter.

(01:51):
This case gave bounty hunters authority to act as agents
for bail bondsman and then starting then, and even if
it wasn't a bail bondsman, that would be the wanted
poster in the Old West, like bringing back dead or alive.
Of course, that's just a bounty on someone's head, right,
because he brings me back dead, that's not gonna do
much good in court. It's dead is easier transporting. Yeah,

(02:11):
But that's the way it started. And I believe what
was Jesse James was worth five grand at his peak. Yeah,
did you go onto the currency converter? Yeah, I would
have thought more. Uh yeah, but the bill was different then,
like now, he would probably be like ten million. Oh sure,
Actually he's worth about a hundred million and adrennine dollars. Yeah. Yeah.

(02:34):
We're basing that on an article by Stephanie Watson who
talked to a very legendary um bounty hunter by the
name of Bob Burton. Right. Yeah, you saw the picture
of him, right, I didn't. He looks like a total
bad dude, carrying the shotgun and the cowboy hat. He Uh.
He has awesome quotes and I just wish we had
Sam Elliott in the studio to read them. That would
be pretty cool. Yeah. Bob Burton, Uh. And I believe

(02:58):
two thousand seven, yes, two thousand seven made uh twenty
thousand arrests. Yeah, he and his his agents and he's
personally made many, many thousand over the last twenty five
years that he's been in business. Yeah. He's director of
the National Enforcement Agency. Yeah. I guess that's just the
name of his company, right. Yeah, So we'll be leaning

(03:19):
on him a little bit for some pointers about bounty hunting, right, Yeah,
can we go ahead and issue the first quote? Yeah,
God if she had Sam Elliott. As bounty hunters were
driving around bad neighborhoods, talking to stupid people, drinking cold
coffee and looking for bad guys, and they talk about
the glory of it all. For every buck we make
arresting someone, we make a thousand and adrennal dollars. So

(03:42):
he's talking about just the rush of it all. Sure,
you run up on a bad guy and you've got
your gun in his mouth and you're saying like, try something,
try something, and you're pumping buddy. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah,
So Jesse James would be worth about a hundred million
and adrenale or of that is what the bounty hunter
would earn. Right, Sure is the cat out of the bag.

(04:02):
I'm not supposed to announce. No, yeah, I know that's good.
Um yeah yeah. They usually get I think ten of
the total amount of bail, right, yeah, so they will
get this from the bail bondsman. So the bail bondsman
obviously doesn't have to pay or not pay the huge amount.
Well yeah, let's recap real quick. When you go to jail,
if you contract the services of a bail bondsman. The

(04:25):
bail you pay them a ten percent premium, and the
bail bondsman tells the court I got this guy. Technically,
this person is in my custody and I will see
to it that he or she makes it to the
court appearance, right. Uh. And in the meantime, you're out free.
And if you skip, then that means supposedly that the
bail bondsman is on the hook for you, uh to

(04:47):
pay your entire bail. So that you gave the bail
bondsman a ten percent premium, say it was five thousand dollars,
they're on the hook to pay the fifty dollars. Right.
If they are in a count only or a state
where they're not um, where they don't have the local
um court system and the local commissioners in their back pocket,

(05:08):
then they might actually have to pay that bail, And
so they send a bounty hunter after you. Okay, So
the bounty hunter works for the bail bondsman. Rarely are
they one and the same. Yeah, two different professions. Chuck.
You said, um, back in the wild West that there
used to be wanted posters that say dead or alive. Right, Um,

(05:29):
it's pretty infrequent these days. Yeah, the dead part, yeah,
because you want to obviously collect your money, and you cannot,
as a bounty hunter bring in a dead suspect because
that doesn't know one any good, You don't get any payment,
and you cannot even uh do the old rough them up? No,
because you can bring a roughed up fugitive to the

(05:51):
jail all day long and they're gonna say we're not
taking them because the fugitive could say, oh, actually it
was the county that did this to me, because they
have deeper pockets than the bill or the bounty hunter
who did right. So yeah, so you the idea is
to bring them in as gently as possible without excessive force.
And I think they said only three to four percent

(06:12):
of the suspects even put up a fight, and usually
that's just I'll try to run or I'll swarm around.
It's not truly like some big violent confrontation. That was
a Bob Burton's estimate. Okay, yeah, but I imagine that's
probably pretty pretty uh exemplary of the rest of the field,
right Yeah. And he also Bob pointed out that an

(06:33):
experience bounty hunter can make fifty eight and probably up
to a hundred grand a year, provided they don't have
like a TV show or a book deal, which we'll
get to in a moment as well. We said in
the last podcast that when you sign a bail bond contract,
you are signing a document that is unlike any other
you're going to ever sign for the rest of your life. Yeah.

(06:53):
I didn't know that you were waving some serious, serious
constitutional rights. For one, you are giving um, the bounty
hunter more jurisdiction over capturing you than any police agency. Yeah.
You're basically giving them permission to come after you and
use almost any kind of means necessary to come and

(07:14):
get you. Right, you're waiving any right to extraditions within
the United States. Um, and uh, you're also saying that,
you know what, you don't have to read me my
Miranda rights. Yeah. And if you know where I live,
you can come into my house to try to arrest
me as long as you're sure that it's my house.
Let's talk about that. This is amazing that bail I'm sorry,

(07:36):
bounty hunters actually have way way more leeway than cops do.
They don't have to have warrants. They can just bust
into your house. They can go through your mail, go
through your trash. Obviously they can tip off, go behind
the scenes and do some more unscrupulous things. As long
as no one knows about it, then it's all well
and good. Yeah. Burton mentioned that he'll he'll tip anywhere

(07:57):
from fifty to bucks for like a motel clark or
bartender or a bouncer to give him a call if
you show up. And what do they need to do this, Josh,
very very little, not very much. No, it depends. Um,
it depends on the state. And uh, in Kentucky, Illinois,
and Oregon, you're not gonna find any bounty hunters. You're

(08:17):
not gonna find any bail bonding companies either. Um. But
like we said that, you're you waive your right to
extradition or right against extradition within the United States. Um.
So these these states are aware that people do come
to their states to flee as fugitives because and a
bounty hunter is going to come into their state after him.

(08:40):
Now say like Kentucky, Um, you can make an arrest
as a bounty hunter in Kentucky, but you have to
go to their court system first and say I need
a warrant. Yeah, this is actually a pretty uh. I
think it would be the ultimate deal for the bounty hunter,
as if you're suspect goes to Kentucky because basically you go,
you get a court order and then the judge will

(09:02):
have a police officer do the dirty work and yeah
that's an Illinois and arrest the person and then you
can have them remanded to your custody, so you get
the award, right, so you don't even have to capture them. No,
you don't, but I imagine it's probably. Um, if you're
a bounty hunter, you probably hate working with the cops,
you think, because it slows things down, derecratic and you're

(09:22):
not used to playing by the same rules that they are. Yeah,
so I imagine it probably is a fly in the
ointment when you have to go get somebody in Illinois
or something like that. Can they do anything Josh they
want to? Are they completely above the law? No, definitely not.
There's um what one sterling example of what you can't do,
um is cross international lines in pursuit of a fugitive.

(09:46):
One place you don't want to go is Mexico. Yes,
that is Dog the uh alleged racist bounty hunter who
has a TV show on an E And I call
him that because he was famously spouted a bunch of nasty,
racist things. Did you hear that recording? Yeah, he seems
like a big jerk to be honest, allegedly, but yeah,

(10:08):
he actually um caught a very famous criminal in Mexico.
Yeah it was um Andrew Luster, who was the Max
factor air back into three. You remember that. It was
a big deal. Oh yeah, and he got in big
trouble for it. He first he recoups some of his
share of the million bucks, and then Mexico said, wait
a minute, it's illegal here. You are under arrest, sir,

(10:29):
but we'll let you out on bail. Well they, yeah,
they they they did let him out on bail. And
the entire job is to bring people back who skip
out on bail, and he skipped out on bail. So
Mexico wanted to extradite this guy. But by that time
he'd already made a name for himself. He's a famous
TV star, So condo Liza Rice writes a letter on

(10:50):
his behalf to Mexico saying, just drop extradition in Mexico
is like, no, I'm gonna I'd like to vouch for
dog yeah, if that's what the letter said. Yeah, I'm
sure Mexico said, no, we're not gonna extradite and uh,
they court said send him to us. He's yet they've
been sent to him. But well they dropped the charges.

(11:10):
Oh they did, Yeah, a couple of years ago. They
dropped the charges. So he's off. He's off, Scott free,
and he's doing his thing. His TV show was can't
suspended for a little while because of the racist remarks
in this whole Mexico thing. But it's going strong again
because the American public is they'll forgive you if you
will bust Downdoors on TV for them. Yeah, who wrote

(11:31):
this actually this is uh Stephanie Watson. Stephanie Watson wrote
about Dog the bounty Hunter his mulleted militia. I thought
that was really good. Um. The other thing, Josh I
thought was interesting that they cannot do, and this seems
like a pretty big loophole, is they cannot enter the
home of a friend or family member to catch you know,
so it seems like you should just hide out with

(11:52):
a friend or family It's becoming quite clear that if
you or I ever jump bail, jump bond, right, sure,
we should go stay at the house of a friend
or family member in Kentucky. Okay, Yeah, I actually do
know people in Kentucky. Okay, I need their address. I
could go stay with Stacy Horn's parents. They chuck, but

(12:12):
they can't come and get me. Who cares. They can
sit outside the house in the moment you come out, buddy,
I'd just I'd be a shut in. Okay, the Chuck's
got it all worth out do alright, chuck. Um. But yeah,
they just about everything else they can do. I can't
rough you up, can't go into Mexico, although they can

(12:33):
they do, and they can't go into the houses of
friends or family members. What are they doing, like, they're
using everything else at their disposal, right, Yeah, they're doing
stuff that probably a good detective might do. They're accessing
your files and your records, phone records, maybe credit card receipts,
asking around on the street, trying to find out where
you like to hang out and shoot pool that kind
of thing. Yeah, and then you stake it out like

(12:55):
cop would you know? Yeah, um, some of them use
like spy gadgets like pinhole cameras that kind of thing. Yeah,
and then but yeah, it seems like a stackout is
probably one of the um bigger parts of the job
of a bounty hunter. Yes, several hours, several days, I
would imagine hours if you're really, really lucky. Yeah, and

(13:16):
then you make the arrest, right Josh. But that's not
the most important thing they have to their advantages it, no,
Stephanie points out. It is what the element of surprise. Yeah, yeah,
I like this. Um, you can you're not a police officer,
so you can totally trick anybody anyway. You can dress

(13:37):
up as a meter reader to get into that house
of your friend or family member, right, yeah, and all
of a sudden they open the door. You say, you're
a ups guy, and then no, Miranda, no nothing, They
just bust in there and put you down the ground.
That's pretty hanky. It is a little hanky, but it
is a real job. It's bona fid And you're saying,
you guys can do this to me when you sign

(13:58):
your bailbond contracts. Well, exact, that's the key, Josha. They
carry guns. Oh yeah, they carry guns. Depending on the state,
you may have to license it with the state. In
Georgia where we live, you have to be you have
to um, have a gun license, no check. You have

(14:19):
to work for only one bail bondsman. This is kind
of a big deal. There are freelance bounty hunters who
will work for anybody, non Bushido code bounty hunters, right, um,
And a lot of states say no, no, no, you
you can't do that. You can be a bounty hunter,
but you have to work for an express bail bondsman
and they have to have you on their books, and

(14:39):
it can only be him, and if you show up
in someone else's books, you're in huge trouble. Right, So
you're still a freelancer. Technically you're not on their on
their staff in some independent contractor, but you exclusively work
with that person, right. I think you can go either
way legally speaking. I don't know practically speaking, but legally speaking,
you could either be on their staff or you could
be an independent contractor. But once you're contracted with one

(15:02):
bail bondsman or bail bonding company, yeah, that's it got you,
you know? Okay? But there are states that allow freelancers.
Which ones are those? Do? You know? I think it's
more most states allow it rather than fewer states. I know, Florida,
North Carolina and South Carolina. UM have rules about freelancing. Well,

(15:24):
that's all we care about because we're likely to get
arrested in here in the Southeast, okay, but not by
a freelancer. I got another quote from Mr Burton, Josh,
you ready, let's hear it's very difficult for a wife
to say to her husband when he's walking out the
door at midnight with a shotgun, have a nice day
at the office. Yeah, so he said. The worry factor,
it's still even though it's usually non violent, it's you know,
you're going out on your own without the protection of

(15:46):
a police officer as well. That's a little scary. And
there was one other trick that um that Burton points out,
and it's called finding out the judas. Yeah. Remember we
said that in the bail bonding episode that in most
cases the bail bond company takes something in collateral from
say your parents, say the title of your parents house.

(16:08):
Let's say you skip bail anyway, your parents are probably
gonna be fairly pissed at you for doing that. And
now all of a sudden they may say, you know what,
I want him back here because I want to keep
my house. So Burton figures out who you've wronged by
jumping bail, or possibly who you wronged in the first
place to get arrested, like a drug deal or something

(16:30):
like that. Uh, and then he'll go he'll find that
person and get the information of where you are, where
you like to shoot pool as you put it, all right,
that's the Judas obviously named from the Bible. I was
about to say Bible character, but I guess Judas is
a real person sold out Jesus. That's probably not a
real popular name. Baby name would you think? I don't

(16:50):
like Judas? Right? Yeah, it's in Lucifer and Chuck. Lastly,
how do you get to be a bounty hunter? Well?
Even or not? Dude, there are schools who are starting
to have programs and bounty hunters and degrees. I'm not
sure what schools, oh, I can guess, but they're out there.
And is it like evening and weekend schools that kind

(17:12):
of thing, probably or maybe online schools, which I have
to say are gaining more and more accreditation and credibility. Yeah.
Before we leave, though, I wanted to point out one
of the cool little tricks I saw is they'll they'll
rig certain things ahead of time to make it harder
for you to escape, Like if they know they're going
to go to your house, they'll go to your car
first and like jam something in the keyhole, like paper. Yeah,

(17:33):
so if they if they get away out the back door,
all of a sudden, they're at their car fumbling with
their keys and you walk up with your taser and
put them down on the ground. Or if you just
run and put your your gun in their mouth. Yeah,
you can do that too, and you can be a female.
We keep saying him a lot. Yeah, he pointed out that, um,
you know, it's a judgment call in the use of force.
He said, if you're coming up to a twenty five

(17:55):
year old girl who uh was wanted for cuding checks,
he's gonna say, look, just come with us. We don't
want to handcuff you. That's probably how it usually goes down. Sure,
not like in the movies. Have you ever seen a
good Bounty Hunter movie? Dead Man? Yeah? Dead Man is
a good When we talked about that, what about my
favorite Josh was besides Midnight Run on the comedy end,

(18:19):
was The Hunter. Steve McQueen's final picture. I never saw that.
It's a good one. I don't know they've ever seen
a Steve McQueen movie. Yeah, you've never seen Bullet. No,
you've never seen The Great Escape. I think I have
seen most of the Great Escape. Isn't Dustin Hoffmann. There
were some really thick coke pile glasses. That's Pepion. Okay, well,
then i've seen Pepion. Steve McQueen was in that though. Okay,

(18:40):
so I have seen a Steve McQueen movie. Yeah, check
out The Hunter. It's his last movie in nineteen eighty.
I always confused The Great Escape with Hogan's heroes. Similar
is that it isnt hunt we are. That was our
two part sweet again. Check out the MPR expose. I
guess you could call it um ale binding in the

(19:01):
United States. It's it's pretty eye opening. Um. You're always
going to want to keep at least a hundred and
fifty dollars in your sock just in case, you know. Um.
And you can also find out more about bail and
bounty hunting by typing those words into the search part
how stuff works dot Com, which leads us, of course,
Chuck to listener mail. Not yet, sir. Now, first we

(19:24):
are going to issue what I believe is our first
ever official apology. That can't be right to people. Well,
we apologize over the place all the time, but this
is official because we uh inadvertently offended Jehovah's witnesses and
the listener mail segment from last week where the kid
wrote in about his uncle who gave the blood transfusion

(19:48):
to the Jehovah's witness even though they refused at first.
The Portuguese doctor in Brazil. Yes, and uh, we just
it was this week, it was tuesday, was it okay? Well,
we just want to apologize officially, uh to them, because
we had quite a few Jehovah's witnesses right in and
it came across as us saying that, you know, they
were just willing to let their kid die and they

(20:08):
were callous and this non Jehovah's witness saved the day
and blah blah blah, And that is not what we
were thinking at the time. It is. It was just
like a nice hero letter in my mind. So sorry, guys,
we didn't know we had so many of you out
there listening to us, and uh you Also they also
pointed out bloodless surgery would be a good topic and

(20:29):
it's a very viable thing. So we're gonna look into
that too, so you feel better, I do, okay, So
I guess that's it, right, right, And now it's time
for listening. Now, Yes, Josh, this is from I'm gonna
call this Canadian email and we will say that this
is from James K in Calgary, Alberta, which is in Canada.

(20:51):
We've been chided for saying Calgary, Canada. That's like saying Atlanta,
United States. So that's in Alberta. And he is a
big devoted listener and basically has mainline them since the
end of September. Like so many people do. They'll discover
the podcast and listen like a hundred and fifty of them,
and then they hate us, and uh not the case

(21:13):
with James. He says, I've listened to every podcast you
have to offer, and there are no more left, no more.
I'm a drowning man, a wash and a sea of
confusion and lethargy. I must now live day to day
and knowing that you will not cannot be there beside me.
I've worked my addiction up to the point of frenzy
and then gone cold turkey in an instant and it hurts.
It hurts more than you'll ever know, so please please

(21:35):
give me more the Habit might be destructive, It might
be pulling me down away from everything I formally held
dear and into the pit some cesspool of intellectual fervor.
But I don't care. I want my fix. I need it,
and you're the only ones that can hook me up
yours forever, James, she could. James has send us some money,
and he actually pointed out a few stats. A hundred

(21:58):
and eighty three podcasts and there's a few more since
he wrote in three sorry, three thousand, two hundred thirty
four minutes of information and entertainment. I don't know about
either of those. And the first podcast with me does
come really stay in your stomach for seven years? Remember
those days when we recorded in tin Can five minutes

(22:18):
and tin Can and episodes without me? He says, nineteen.
I didn't know there that many without me, But yeah,
we should probably re record those nineteen or just erase them.
There were some good topics in their checker. Okay, uh,
if you have any ideas for podcast topics so we
can create new podcasts for James and all the other s.

(22:38):
Y S K. Junkies out there popping in an email,
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(22:59):
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