Hot Check Office
Lubbock County Courthouse
904 Broadway-First Floor Room 112
PO Box 10536
Lubbock, TX 79408
806-775-1111
HotCheck@co.lubbock.tx.us
In order to file a theft by check or issuance of bad check with the Hot Check Office, you will need to do the following:
- Send a Statutory Notice to the writer of the check giving them 10 days to pay you in full. Although this notice was once required to be sent by certified mail, that no longer holds true. You can now send this by first class mail.
- Complete an affidavit. You can either get a copy of the affidavit when you come into our office or you can find it on our website and print it out at your convenience. It can be found at www.co.lubbock.tx.us under Departments, District Attorney, then Related Pages. Information needed on the affidavit includes the check writer’s name, address, date of birth, driver’s license or identification number and state from which it’s issued, phone number, sex, race, height, weight, hair and eye color. The more information you have, the better our chances of prosecuting the writer in the case they do not repay you. This affidavit must be notarized. If you bring it into our office, we can notarize it at no cost to you. Please remember to bring your ID/DL if you need us to notarize it.
- Bring necessary documentation. In addition to the completed and notarized affidavit, we will need the original legal check copy provided to you by your bank. If you deposit checks electronically, we will need the original check and the letter the bank sends to you with all of the required information, including the date of deposit, the check number, the amount for which it was written, and the reason the check was not honored. Please note that currently we cannot accept ACH payment returns. If you accept ACH payments and your bank notifies you that a scheduled ACH payment did not go through, you will need to file it with the Lubbock Police Department, Crimes Against Properties.
In addition to the face value of the check, our office will also collect a $30 merchant fee, per check, on your behalf. This is intended to cover any returned check fees you may have been charged by your bank. The writer will also be charged a Criminal District Attorney fee. The amount of this fee depends on the amount for which the check is written. It is anywhere from $15 to $75 per check. Any money collected on your behalf will be sent, in the form of a check, to the address you provide on the affidavit. Note that if the writer cannot pay in one payment, we will allow them to set up a payment agreement. Money will be sent to you as it is collected.
Understand that the purpose of this office is not collection, but rather prosecution of individuals who commit acts prohibited by Texas law. While we will do our best to recover restitution for you, we may not be able to do that. If the defendant does not repay the money owed, the judge may order the defendant to serve time in jail in order to pay back his/her debt to society.
