A former bail bondsman is accused of stealing money from a woman who wanted him to post bond for her son.
Vallery Thierry, 40, was arrested by Ascension Parish deputies on June 15th on a fugitive warrant because of outstanding charges in East Baton Rouge Parish, which included theft, forgery, and filing false public records.
The arrest warrant from the East Baton Rouge Sheriff’s office stated Baton Rouge resident Tykisha Mason contacted law enforcement alleging Thierry stole $2,060 from her after she paid him the money on May 20, 2022, to post bail for her son, Deantae Mason, who is incarcerated in the EBR Parish Prison.
The bail was never posted.
Mason said when her son was arrested on multiple charges, including bank fraud, gun, as well as drug charges, his bond was too high, so she hired an attorney to request a bond reduction. Once the reduction was granted, she reached out to Thierry because he had a prior relationship with someone in her family.
According to Mason, Thierry was paid $3,500 to bail her daughter-in-law out of jail on April 1, 2022. Mason said after her daughter-in-law was released, she paid Thierry $200 every two weeks.
Mason said she handed Thierry the money outside of the jail and he told her he would post her son’s bond. After a while, she said she called the jail to see what was going on.
“I called to see what was taking so long and they told me no bond was posted,” she recalled. “First he told me he was going to give me my money back but then he stopped answering my calls for a little while. When he called me back again, he told me to get a lawyer.”
Mason did more than get a lawyer. She filed a civil complaint and her attorney advised her to reach out to the Louisiana Department of Insurance.
Deputies found that in March 2022, Thierry submitted a verification of license status form to the EBR Prison. The license status is a document printed through the Louisiana Department of Insurance (LDI) that the EBR Parish Prison requires all bondsmen to submit to show that the license is active.
The document was dated January 8, 2022, according to the arrest warrant, and showed Thierry’s license status as active effective from Oct. 19, 2021, through Nov. 19, 2023.
Officials say the LDI verified that the license status document Thierry submitted was a forged document. What tipped the LDI off to the forged document is that all licenses are set to expire on the last day of the month. Officials with the Department of Insurance said Thierry has not been licensed as a bail bond producer in Louisiana since Oct. 31, 2019, when his license expired.
Officials say Thierry denied that the document was forged, but he acknowledged his license was suspended in 2019. He said he had fulfilled the requirements by the insurance department to get his license back in active status.
Thierry’s license was initially suspended in 2019 because the LDI found that he submitted false information involving the bail bond apprentice program. He did not produce the correct documents showing that his apprentice completed the three months of work experience, according to a copy of Thierry’s notice of fine and suspension for his license from the LDI.
He was fined $500 and his license was suspended for three months.
The LDI provided information showing that Thierry had not taken the necessary steps to renew his license by Oct. 31, 2021. Because of that, his license was canceled, which would have made it harder for him to print a real verification form from the LDI website.
With the information that Thierry was no longer licensed, Mason wondered, what would happen with the bond that he posted for her daughter-in-law?
“All the paperwork he used to bond her out was fraudulent paperwork,” Mason said Wednesday afternoon. “One of the detectives reached out to me and told me he was arrested in Gonzales because that’s where he’s from. I wasn’t the only one that he’s done this to, but I was the one who took action.”
Deantae is still in jail and his mother said the money stolen has set that mission back. The arrest warrant stated that Thierry acknowledged receiving money from Mason to post a bond for her son. However, he said because she signed the paperwork with him, she cannot get a refund.
“I’m trying to raise the money again to get him out since he (Thierry) took that money from me,” Mason said.”
According to the LDI, Thierry did pay the fine he owed and his suspension was lifted in July 2021. In Feb. 2022, Thierry put in another application for a license, but it was an incomplete application. That means Thierry has not had a bails bond license in the state of Louisiana since 2019.
Thierry is also a private investigator working as Extreme Private Investigation. His license for PI is current & up to date.
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