Ira Judelson - The Fixer: The Notorious Life of a Front-Page Bail Bondsman

To my wife, Blake, who believed in me and stood by me when nobody else did

A man of courage never needs weapons,

but he may need bail.

LEWIS MUMFORD

CONTENTS

Introduction

Who I Am

In Yiddish, a person who makes things happen is called a macher .

I grew up hearing that word, usually to describe a friend of the family who was a big shot, a fixer. Someone who could rattle a couple cages, bail you out of a jam. Its a term of respect, but its almost like a grudging respectlike, if you dont blow a little smoke and show a little admiration, youll never get the juice.

It helps to say the word out loud. You have to hear it to get its full meaning. Youve got to go heavy on that ch sound in the middlenot like the ch at either end of church , but like the ch in Chanukah .

Macher . Like youve got something stuck in your throat.

It has no real equivalent in the English language, but it gets pretty damn close to what I dowhat I do for a living and how I live my life, both. Guess you could say I make things happen. I know who to call, what buttons to push to open the right doors.

This doesnt begin to cover it, but its a place to start.

So what do I do? Im a bail bondsmanalthough this, too, only gets close to it. A lot of people, they hear that Im a bail bondsman, their ears pick up. They dont have a clue what a bail bondsman is, what a bail bondsman does, but they think they have some idea from the movies, from television, from the nightly news. They think they know, but they dont really know.

I cant always explain it. The nuts and boltsthats easy enough. But the day-to-day, the essence thats tough to get across. So I tell them stories instead. For years, Ive been telling stories. Every case comes with a story. Good guys. Bad guys. Mob guys. White-collar guys caught with their hands where their hands arent supposed to beId call it a cookie jar, but that makes it sound all sugar and spice, when in reality some of my clients are caught reaching into some dark, dark places. The stories I tell are not just about the transaction, the piece of business. Theyre not just about how I got this or that drug dealer out of jail. Thats only a part of it. The rest of it, the meat of it, comes in how the characters around the courthouse go home with me at the end of each day. Theyre in my head, in my heart, to where I cant shake them.

Dont even bother to try.

My wife and kids, I cant shake them, either. Theyre tied into everything I do, every bond I write. Its like a package deal. I bring my work home with me, my cells always within reach, but the calls cut both ways. It could be a defense attorney calling, middle of the night, asking me to bail out some superstar rapper or athlete before news of his arrest hits the papers. Or it could be one of my kids, pulling me from some judges bench to tell me the dog shit on the rug.

Lately, I meet people, they want to know if Im like Dog the Bounty Hunter, from that reality series. Thats the knee-jerk response. They hear bail bondsman , they think bounty hunterlike the two go hand in hand. They think I chase fugitives for a living, but thats not it at all. Forget that the Dog Chapman approach just wouldnt cut it in New York. (Yeah, if I walked into the South Bronx waving a pellet gun, looking for some kid who jumped bail, Id get destroyed .) And forget that bounties only come into play when someone jumps on memeaning, when a client Ive bailed out fails to turn up for a court date and forfeits his or her bond, leaving me on the hook.

I dont chase bad guys. They mostly come to me. Why? Because I lend them money at a rate. Because Im their get-out-of-jail-free cardonly its not exactly free. Theyre still tied to the court, still in the system, still obligated to stand trial or work out some type of plea deal. Plus, they have to put up a house or a business or a piece of property as collateral. They have to pay me a fee. They have to promise not to skip town or duck out on a hearing. And with me, its more than just a promise. Its like a blood oath, because if you fuck with me, you fuck with my living. You fuck with my family. It happens, but I dont like when it happens, so I do what I can to make sure it doesnt happen. Sometimes I make clients wear an ankle bracelet, or some other type of monitoring device, so I can keep tabs on them while were waiting for their next court date to come around on the calendar. Sometimes all I can do is scare the plain crap out of them, tell them Ill jack up their family so hard theyll have no place to live, nothing in the bank.

Im like a legal loan shark, what it comes down to. A macher who steps in and finds a way to get suspects out from behind bars to wait out their trial dates at home, go about their business.

The bail bond business is one of the oldest professions on the planetbut not always the most honorable. I get that. The concept of bail goes all the way back to medieval times. I get that, too. The way it works is a judge sets a baila dollar amount, secured by cash or propertywhich is then pledged to a court to secure the release of a suspect from jail, pending a trial. On a misdemeanorsay, a breaking-and-entering charge, with no priors and no reason to think the defendant is a flight riskbail could be as low as $500. On a felonysay, a rape or a murder charge, with a violent history and no good reason to stick around to stand trialbail could run to seven figures. Or a judge could decide not to grant bail at all, for any reason at all. Up until 1984, pretrial detention was based solely on the risk of flight, but since then judges have had leeway to hold suspects charged with a crime of violence, drug offenses carrying maximum penalties of ten years or more, or in cases with the possibility of obstruction of justice or witness tampering.

Its a business of risk, basically. For the most part, the judge has to weigh the severity of the crime and the danger to society a suspect might pose on the streets against the presumption of flight risk. On my end, I have to consider the size of the bond against whatever cash or jewelry or property my client is able to put up as collateral, and then I weigh that against my own thoughts on whether that person is going anywhere.

Basically, you dont want to need to call mebut Im a good guy to have on your side if you do. I dont give a shit if youre innocent. Thats not my problem. I dont give a shit about the mistakes you might have made in your pastjust the ones you might make next. Only thing I care about is that you dont screw me over and take the roof over my head. If I trust you, Ill go to the wall for you. But I need something back in the bargain. I need to know youll be good to your word.

And heres the thing: if I trust you, Ill do you an extra solid. I might be the only person keeping you from getting sucked up in the injustice system . Think of it: youre locked up in Rikers, with no protection and a pretty facewho the hell else you gonna call? I know who to touch for a favor to make sure your time inside goes easy. I know which judges might let you slide and which ones have zero tolerance. I have a direct line to white-shoe lawyers wholl work pro bono for the right case, and I know the cops and the DAs who believe in second chances.

So, yeah... I guess Im a macher . I know people. Its my job to make things happen, even when theyre not supposed to happen. Its my job to get you out of jailand then, if it works out you have to go back in, to make sure youre protected. Ive helped enough pimps, hustlers, and gangbangers to where theres always someone I can call.

Ive got more favors coming back to me than I know what to do withmight as well put em to work, right?