OP, you should have done it, just to say that you were charged with Grand Theft Auto.
Just found this old thread and have a problem with the “paper trail”
If you say you paid cash, there is no paper trail to money under your mattress a couple of years.
If the dealer has never seen the cashier’s check, that paper trail ends at maybe 50 banks in the state, all of which need to be searched with separate warrants, until you stumble on the right one.
If the dealer is found to have grounds to sue, AFAIK they don’t have to serve “warrants” on every bank in the state, they just…ask the buyer which bank they used. The buyer either answers or faces consequences (which might be their refusal being used against them, or it might be grounds for contempt proceedings). You can be forced to testify against yourself in a civil case, and even if you have legitimate grounds for using your 5th Amendment rights (such as that the evidence might incriminate you in the theft of a car!), that can also be used against you in a civil case.
At least one of the dealer-signed documents will constitute a legal receipt of payment tendered. Now the dealer has the burden of evidence that it was not. The buyer need only say he paid cash, which has no paper trail, for which he has a receipt, and the dealer has to prove that he didn’t. Circumstantial evidence may exist, such as a cashier’s check by the same buyer on the same date in the same amount, but the dealer has to find it. A receipt is a receipt, and it goes a long way.
For most people, buying-a-car levels of cash will leave a paper trail:
It might, but there’s still the problem jtur88 is talking about and I was talking about when the thread was new. As far as I know, (and a lawyer can correct me if I’m wrong) you can’t just sue me and go on a fishing expedition just because you want to, without any evidence to support your case at all. As you said earlier
and I think that’s the issue. Specifically, I think that some people are perhaps disagreeing on what “grounds to sue” means based on amount of money involved - I can’t imagine anyone saying the used car dealer can look through my bank account/credit card statements when his money comes up short on the day I was given a bill of sale that says “paid in full” for the $2K car. Certainly no one would say the electric company can dig through my finances because they claim I didn’t pay the $125 January bill even though I have a receipt that says I paid at their payment center.
So the dealer in this case sues the buyer - forget that we know the buyer didn't actually pay , because our knowledge of the actual facts doesn't affect how it plays out. Forget the fact that the buyer will be lying if he says he paid- because people actually do lie and get away with it. Forget that suing the buyer will most likely cost them more than $25K unless they can find someone to take it on a contingency basis with these facts.
Here’s the evidence we have at the beginning of the suit:
- The dealership says the customer didn’t pay. The dealership’s only evidence of this is that the money is missing and the employee’s deny receiving payment from the customer.
- The dealership gave the customer the keys; re-titled and registered the car ( which requires a bill of sale, which is functionally a receipt) and let the customer drive away
- The dealership s not saying that they were paid by cashier’s check and it was misplaced - that would be a very different issue. They’re saying they weren’t paid at all.
- The buyer has either said nothing yet , or perhaps provided the above documents ( such as the bill of sale) as proof of payment)
At the very least, the dealership is going to have to convince someone at some point that it’s more likely that they re-titled and registered the car , and give me the keys and let me drive off without getting paid than the alternative , which is that I did indeed pay and their employee either stole or lost the payment.
While the cashier check version is pretty conclusively a bust as to getting a free car, the cash version Could work. Provided you are willing to first lie (“I did, too, pay!”) and eventually, while under oath, perjure yourself (“Your honor, I did, too, pay!”)
If you’re willing to do that, there are easier ways to get stuff for free that don’t involve the hassle of sitting through the true-coat upsell nightmare: Just buy a handgun for about 400 bucks, and start hanging around ATMs When someone has withdrawn cash, show them the gun and they will just give it too you. By about the 3rd or so withdrawal, you will have paid for the gun, and all the ones after are pure profit. If for stylistic reasons it absolutely has to be perjury, you could instead pretend some guy in a parking garage hit you and left you in unimaginable life-long agony. If you practice your falling and figure out the camera angles, it can’t be that hard.
- The buyer had a $25m withdrawal made from their bank account on the day of or a few days before the purchase.
If the buyer took the check home & put it in a drawer or destroyed it, you’d be hard pressed to make a claim that he got a car for free. He had $25m deducted from his account & he got a car. Eventually, that money would go to the state under escheat laws, not back to the buyer. The dealership would be hard pressed to prove anything other than they misplaced the check as bank records would show a check issued & outstanding. I’d think it’s within the buyer’s rights to charge the dealership a nominal fee (say, one hour’s pay) to have to go back to the bank & do whatever is necessary to get a replacement check as that requires time & effort on his part.
It’s a very different story if he takes the check back to his bank & has them void it & return the money to his account.
Cash is also a very different issue. Someone at the dealership is going to count the money, almost certainly counted twice to make sure of the amount & quite possibly by two different people. For $25,000, in addition to counting & issuing a cash receipt there’s governmental paperwork to file. Someone is going to remember all of that because of the extra work involved over (not) taking a single small piece of paper. I’d also be surprised if some large combination of Ben’s &/or Ulysses’s didn’t ripple thru the dealership so that other employees not involved with the transaction were aware of it, too.
The bottom line is that paying by [cashier’s] check (the usual way to buy a car) leaves a paper trail.
Paying by cash does not necessarily leave a paper trail (i.e. if you insist you got the money from under your mattress), but in the case of buying a new car (average cost $36,718 in 2019), that has to be unusual enough for your typical car dealership that they would have plenty of employees who would testify that no such cash transaction had taken place. Even if you swear up and down that you had paid by cash, I don’t think it is likely that you would prevail in court, and you have a good chance getting charged criminally if there is sufficient evidence to show that you are lying.
Nitpick: $25m (or $25M) = $25,000,000
You mean $25k (or $25K).
Nm
No, I know what I typed & I meant $25m. :dubious:
I’m not talking so much about who wins in the end as much as when the dealer gets to demand access to my financial records. But filing that government form , and double-counting and word getting around the dealership - does that happen if the employee I hand the cash to decides to pocket it? I’m guessing not. There’s a difference between the dealership being able to prove that the business entity never got the payment and being able to prove I never handed it to their employee.
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Or maybe he was including the TruCoat.
Nobody ever uses m like that.
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XXV
or MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM is the only Roman numeral based way of expressing 25000.
In the bond world it’s used that way; that’s where I learned it, working in a bond house. ::Points at website banner::
Why would you use k (for Kilo) when we don’t typically use metric in the US? 
I can’t confirm or deny what you used within the niche circle that you used to work within, but I very much doubt it’s widespread within the bond industry. In any case in English ??K is widely accepted as ??,000 and ??M is widely accepted as ??,000,000 and using it otherwise is just being pointlessly obtuse.
lower case m = thousands
Upper case M or mm or MM = millions
the bond market is not a niche circle.
Again, I point at the banner on this website; it’s taking longer than we thought because of obtuse (ob·tuse - adjective - 1. annoyingly insensitive or slow to understand.) people like you. Haven’t we done this dance before?
- I’ve read many stories about banks inadvertently crediting funds to the wrong account. They have every right to reverse the transaction and remove the funds once the mistake is discovered. Just like the car dealership has the right to correct their mistake. if the customer takes actions , such as withdrawing the funds, to try to prevent the bank from correcting their mistake, they are criminally charged. Like you would be if you tried to pull something like running to the same dealership to buy a second car to obfuscate the mistake.
https://www.ncconsumer.org/news-articles-eg/using-money-mistakenly-deposited-into-your-account.html
2. If you make a large cash purchase, you need to get a receipt. Otherwise you might be disadvantaged if you ever have to prove you made payment. I don’t know where you are getting the idea that you could possibly prevail in a civil trial without offering any evidence in your defense. Watch some small claims court TV shows and see how people that try this get thoroughly trounced. And since were talking civil court, no one has to prove beyond reasonable doubt that you didn’t pay. More likely than not is the standard.