Is a notary public qualified to say this?
Their LLC is a licensed car dealer, which is why they have dealer plates and insurance through the LLC. This saves them the expense of having to register a car they’re just going to flip. The confusion with the notary is because either Dan and Don are inexperienced, the notary is not used to car sales to dealers, or Amy got the story wrong.
It sounds like Bob meant to contact Dan and Don about the car, because they’re the ones (allegedly) pulling a mileage rollback scam. Perhaps Bob was confused about who he was contacting, or somehow he thinks Amy is in on it, which is stupid, scammers don’t advertise a car for a low price, then rollback the mileage and advertise it for a high price.
If I’m telling the story, Dan and Don recently traded a fraction of a bitcoin for some software that can rollback mileage. They borrowed some money to get the dealership license, and have started purchasing cars to flip. They think that buying cars from 2 hours away, and then rolling back the mileage will keep people from noticing that the same car was for sale a few days ago with twice the miles. They didn’t count on Bob shopping for cars in a 200 mile radius. Fortunately, for Dan and Don, Bob is too stupid to figure out who is actually pulling the scam.
I’d love to be scammed by someone giving me $3400 in cash up front for a car with 300,000 miles on it.
Bob’s in on it. Expect more contacts about police, collection agencies, sheriffs, etc… But he’ll drop the “charges” for a monetary consideration, just take out $X dollars in gift cards and send him the card numbers. SCAM
Who ever is in on it is pretty dumb. They’d be getting the title for a crappy old car from me and a note to pick it up before I have their car towed off my property.
My guess is that Don and Dan are flippers as mentioned above. Buy a high mileage car that is in good condition, roll back the odometer, and sell it for instant profit.
Bob is probably mad because after seeing the car being listed for much more money by new sellers he thought he had missed out on a great deal at a lower price. He may not even have noticed the mileage change. Or maybe he’s another flipper who wanted to do the same thing and lost his chance.
Was the car in the kind of condition where it could pass for a 150,000 mile car?
Dan & Don could just be trying to re-sell the car with old bait-n-switch tactics. Advertise it as 150k miles asking $7k. When buyer shows up and balks they apologize for their mistake and say they’ll knock $1k off the price.
Maybe Bob thinks Amy is in on Dan & Don’s game is grouping them all together and threatening her.
I have no real guess on this.
Could it be Bob is just a plain weirdo?
I had a guy call me up once to ask about a car he was considering that was at the dealership I traded it in at. I wasn’t real happy they gave him my number. The guy asks me about a piece of molding that was kind of bent over above the mirror. When I told him why that was he started ranting about why did I do that, it looks terrible, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah! I said “hey buddy, it was my car, I’ll do whatever the hell I want to do with my car. piss off!” and hung up.
Some people are just freaking strange.
I can’t see any way Amy can be scammed on this. She already has the cash. No scammer is going to give up $3000 up front and then have a third party try to collect by text. Forget about the $3000 being fake. That would be a felony federal charge right off the bat.
@smithsb , love the new avatar. Great design and very funny.
If D&D have a ‘legitimate’ car flipping operation going, and then they try this scam as a side hustle, it would be reasonable for them to show up with cash and make an actual purchase. Re-enter Bob, who claims he knows what the car is really worth from Amy’s original ad. Re-enter D&D who claim that all the shuffle at the notary’s means it still leads back to Amy, so she’d better pay Bob.
Doesn’t seem like it would be a very good scam, to me, but if they chose cars they could make a profit on anyway, they’re only out the time that Bob spends texting and the price of the new ad. The fact that the new ad cut the mileage in half and doubled the price seems like suspiciously simple math.
They part the car out for a profit, claim to have sold it for 7k, promise to cut her in on the profit, but she has to pay Bob herself.
I’ve never heard of it, but it would at least make sense. Or Bob could be one of those that thinks the car was his to refuse from the moment he expressed interest. I’ve known those types.
Buying and selling cars can be pretty fraught. Another forum frequently carries stories from people who have sold a car privately and then been contacted by the new owner claiming that there are all kinds of problems and demanding compensation. They have little or no legal claim but can be intimidating.
Some years ago my wife sold her small car. Before the sale, we had some work done to get it past the MOT and tidy up some rust. The first people to look at it were all dealers who offered silly low prices. Then a guy called who said he wanted the car for his daughter who had just passed her test. He turned up with a teenage girl and after some negotiation, we agreed the sale, even though it was for less than we had hoped for.
A few weeks later I took a phone call from someone, asking about the history of the car and was the (fairly low) mileage genuine. In the UK, you can easily see previous owners. I told him what he wanted to know and he seemed satisfied, then I asked him what he had paid for it. Clearly, the guy who bought it from us was a dealer and he had made a good profit for very little effort.
When I sold my MG Midget, I listed it “as is” and “price firm”. It had a cracked exhaust manifold that a friend had repaired with muffler tape. I had tried to find a replacement and couldn’t. I never mentioned it.
Someone came to look at it and left their car/keys/driver’s license with me while they took the car to a mechanic to look over. They were gone hours.
I was ready to come down in price when they returned, but they handed over the full asking price!
The phrase “as is” carries no weight legally in the UK. Sellers should disclose things they know about but are under no obligation to say more.
Your buyer could prove that you knew about the cracked manifold because he would see the repair. He obviously decided that he wanted the car in spite of that. You never know - maybe he already had a spare manifold.
Very unlikely. British Leyland no longer produced them. I’d been searching for an exhaust manifold for months.
As for calling the state police about the mileage a CarFax type document or even some service/maintenance receipts that have both theVIN and mileage would prove Amy wasn’t lying about the mileage.
If it’s like Florida, the seller is required to list the mileage of the car they are selling on the transfer section of the title.
If this is the case in Pennsylvania, then what mileage did Amy list on the title? Did she list 300k or 150k? Or did she leave it blank for the buyer to fill in (not a good idea)? If Amy listed the actual 300k mileage, then I don’t see how the buyer could turn around and sell the car listed with 150k miles because the new buyer would see the discrepancy on the title, despite the odometer being rolled back.
Perhaps Amy could be held liable if she listed 150k on the title transfer at the request of her buyer, or if she left it blank for him to fill in. If he got in trouble for misrepresenting mileage on re-sell, he could always claim that he too was duped by Amy. “I thought I was buying a car with 150k miles, look she listed 150k on the title. Rolled back odometer? She must have done that too!”
This is a Federal requirement, applicable in every state. The Truth in Mileage Act (TIMA) requires the seller to provide an accurate odometer disclosure to the buyer at the time of sale or transfer of ownership. The buyer must sign to acknowledge the mileage disclosed.
The Notary would have been responsible for ensuring this was done.
Yes, indeed. You’d have to be out of your mind to willingly assist an obvious odometer scammer. People go to prison for this.
Thanks, stolen used under license from elsewhere.
The Truth In Mileage Act exempts vehicles more than ten years old. A car with 300K miles likely qualifies.
My completely out of the butt, uneducated guess is that they are setting up their ‘defense’ if they get busted rolling back the odometer and sell it for higher price.
They can say when accused… “I didn’t do nuttin…it must have been the woman Amy who screwed us!”