As far as I understand what they essentially said is "We'll pay $X if SBF doesn't show up to court" (where X is $200k or $500k) To the best of my knowledge the

As far as I understand what they essentially said is "We'll pay $X if SBF doesn't show up to court" (where X is $200k or $500k) To the best of my knowledge they haven't paid anything yet. Bail bonds are when you have a company make that promise for you at the cost of you paying 10% of the bond. If you show up to court the bail bondsman makes 10% of the bond and if you don't they have to pay the whole bond amount. There's also a system of bounty hunters that somehow happens if you don't show up, but I don't know how that works. If you can post bail yourself, you don't actually lose any money assuming you show up to court.