Bondsmen suspected in robbery

HMMMMMMMMM....probably a good thing that the bondsman are unknown at this time

BLUFFTON, SC -- The robbery of two men in a greater Bluffton home Wednesday morning was not the work of two police impostors, the Beaufort County Sheriff's Office said Friday.

Rather, investigators now believe two bail bondsmen from a bonding company in Beaufort are responsible, and it's possible they had the wrong house, Capt. Toby McSwain said.

According to McSwain, the two victims -- both men, ages 48 and 20 -- living in the targeted All Joy Road home have not had jail bonds posted by a bondsman.

Sheriff's investigators are working with the South Carolina Department of Insurance, the licensing agency for bail bondsmen, to figure out what happened and whether a crime was committed.

"We've got to get to the bottom of whether these guys had the authority to take the money," McSwain said.

The Sheriff's Office originally thought two men posing as police officers were robbers.

At around 1:45 a.m., two men wearing police badges on necklaces knocked on the back door. When one victim woke up and went to the door, he saw the men holding the badges and papers purported to be search warrants outside the window .

One of the suspects kept the two residents in the living room while the other searched the house. He took an undisclosed amount of cash from the victims' wallets, the Sheriff's Office has said.

McSwain said the two suspected bondsmen have not been identified, and the undisclosed bonding company in Beaufort said it does not know who went to the home.

The Sheriff's Office occasionally deals with bonding companies. Most of the time, the bondsmen notify the Sheriff's Office if they're going to be working on recovering bond money in the area.

McSwain said the sheriff's office was not notified of any such work taking place on Wednesday.

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Do not consider anything for your interest which makes you break your word, quit your modesty, or inclines you to any practice which will not bear the light, or look the world in the face .... Marcus Antonius

I AM Some Folks "KARMA" and A MODERATOR @ FRN

Or,

Could they just be complete imposters? Not bail agents or police of course.

Where do you think they get the idea to pull a scam like this, if it was a scam?

Or maybe it is LE pretending to be bondsmen pretending to be LE . Or maybe it was just another imposter wanting someone to think they were bondsmen pretending to be LE to pull off a robbery.

No matter who it was, if they stole money, they deserve to be prosecuted. If they pretended to be LE, they deserve to be prosecuted. It doesn't matter if they turn out to be bondsmen, other than giving our profession another black eye, if they did the crime, they deserve the time.

Of course, if it turns out to be a pretender, it will be on the back page, and everyone will still think it was a bondsman impersonating LE. It still amazes me that the original "profession related" story or suggestion is important where the follow up isn't if it doesn't support the original allegation.

I'm not voicing an opinion either way on this story, just saying that I am tired of the automatic assumption of another wrongdoing on the part of one from our profession. Laws have been passed based on false allegations, even when later proven false.

I will be interested in seeing who is at fault here.

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Kathy Blackshear
Blackshear Investigations
Blackshear Bail Bonds
Sales Associate, Prepaid Legal Services, Inc.
Walsenburg, CO

Proud Member of the AB Reject Club

I'm having flashbacks to the AZ incident. We all remember what that led too

_________________
Steve Hedrick
Hedrick & Associates INVESTIGATIVE GROUP
Nederland, TX
TX PI LIC #A-09665
(409) 284-1895
http://360.yahoo.com/ftachaser357
"For every DEFENDANT that fails to appear in Court, there is a VICTIM seeking Justice"

Update...

http://www.islandpacket.com/news/local/ ... 2385c.html

Will this bail bondsman need a bail bondsman?
By BEN CRITES
bcrites@islandpacket.com
843-706-8138
Published Wednesday, April 25, 2007
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The Beaufort County Sheriff's Office is looking for a bail bondsman accused of stealing cash while looking for a fraud client in the wrong house.

The man and his co-worker weren't

licensed bondsmen at the time they went into the home on All Joy Road in greater Bluffton on Jan. 24, sheriff's Capt. Toby McSwain said.

The Sheriff's Office will meet with Beaufort County Clerk of Courts Elizabeth Smith to see if she will prohibit the bonding company that employed the men -- 24/7 Bail Bonding -- from doing business in the county.

Columbia resident Shakur Abdul Hakeem, 32, also known as Sean Orlando Hunter, is wanted on two counts of petit larceny.

The Sheriff's Office said Hakeem and another man were let into the home around 1:45 a.m. after showing two residents their bondsmen badges. The Hispanic residents did not speak English, according to the report.

Hakeem told an investigator they had knocked on the doors of three homes nearby before they went to the All Joy Road house. They were looking for a woman charged with fraud who lives on Confederate Avenue, the report states.

Hakeem's co-worker allegedly kept the residents in a front room while Hakeem looked for the woman, the report states. The Sheriff's Office says that's when Hakeem stole cash from their wallets. Hakeem has denied that.

To be a licensed bondsman or runner, applicants must not have been convicted of a felony or any heinous crime within the past 10 years.

Hakeem has been convicted of "several serious offenses," according to the report, but the report did not provide what crimes he had been convicted of nor when the convictions occurred.

The Sheriff's Office had originally thought two men posing as police officers had robbed the residents on All Joy Road.

On Jan. 25, a Beaufort County jail inmate told an investigator he was picked up by the same bondsmen the night of the crime and was sitting in the back seat of their sport utility vehicle when the bondsmen entered the All Joy Road home.

_________________
Kathy Blackshear
Blackshear Investigations
Blackshear Bail Bonds
Sales Associate, Prepaid Legal Services, Inc.
Walsenburg, CO

Proud Member of the AB Reject Club