To some, Dennis Bannon is a bounty hunter. To others, he`s a scum bag. To himself, he`s a collection agent with a heart.
The 35-year-old father of two locates parents who fail to pay court-ordered child support. He recently added a special division to Mid-Atlantic Collections Inc., his 3-year-old agency. Bannon hopes the new enterprise, called Children Support Services, will add a dimension to the questionable image of bill collectors and the sad state of the American child-support system.
”Collection agencies notoriously rank right around pond scum in credibility, just slightly above most politicians,” Bannon said.
But now he is involved in a business he said no one will criticize.
In 1989, more than $19 billion in child support went uncollected, according to the latest statistics from the Census Bureau. What gives Bannon and the 15 other similar businesses across the U.S. their opportunity is the time-consuming battle of bureaucratic red tape and paperwork that parents face at state agencies if the delinquent parent crosses state boundaries to avoid paying child support.
Through advanced computer systems and collection-agency techniques, Bannon is able to do something that overburdened states and former spouses have been unable to do: track down delinquent parents.
He does it by gaining access to magazine subscription databases, motor-vehicle files and land-registry and court documents. He also relies on techniques he won`t discuss but insists are legal.
Bannon, a former deputy sheriff of Prince George`s County, Md., who has been married for almost 14 years, finds fathers who have been AWOL for years. Only 3 percent of Bannon`s cases involve a delinquent mother; nationwide, that figure is about 9 percent.
Bannon said delinquent parents may be able to run but they can`t hide from him or his six collectors: They aren`t safe at home, at work or out running errands.
He said it takes anywhere from 10 minutes to 20 days to locate a parent, and once he finds them, he doesn`t lose track of them.
Recently, for example, a father was located in Georgia, and one of Bannon`s agents contacted him. For two weeks the father eluded the agent by moving to three counties until he finally decided to stop running and start paying child support.
His agency tracked down a parent in Seattle, getting his new phone number by dialing 411, then called his house, where a new wife and children also lived. A son answered the phone and informed the caller that his father was at a K mart. Within minutes an agent had the father paged at the store, Bannon said.
”We can make it a living nightmare,” Bannon said. ”I like to think of ourselves as educators and motivators. We educate the people who err in their ways. We make them face up to their responsibility, and failure to pay child support is a failure to face up to your responsibility.”
Since the inception of Children Support Services in September, Bannon said, the agency has developed a caseload of about 125 clients. He said he has located all parents who were sought and obtained at least partial support payments for at least half his clients.
Bannon`s agency doesn`t always work alone. For example, he has a cooperative relationship with state prosecutors. They frequently exchange information that will help each other find the delinquents.
The law prevents him from assisting a parent receiving welfare. His agency works only for custodial parents with a court order for child support payments that are at least 30 days delinquent. The majority of Bannon`s clients are owed an average of $12,000 to $15,000 in child support, but some are only a month or two behind in payments.
He charges a $25 application fee, which he said he has waived for half of his clients, and he gets up to 25 percent of what he collects; the percentage is determined by the client`s financial status.
Bannon said he thought he would be dealing with losers when he first started hunting for delinquent parents but that hasn`t been the case.
”We get cases on everybody from the gardener and the guy who works at McDonald`s to guys who are players in the National Football League and are making big money,” he said.
If the non-custodial parent doesn`t earn much, Bannon said he is willing to make a deal. ”Even if he can only send $20 a week,” Bannon said, ”that`s more than he`s been paying.”
