YOU GOTTA HAVE THE UNDERCOAT!..........................
Posted on 03/14/2022 11:21:32 AM PDT by Red Badger
Over 30 people were defrauded by the man's lease return scam.
A good car salesman without a job can be a dangerous person. All that industry know-how under their belt can create the perfect storm for fraud if one wanted to go down that road of finessing people out of their money. That’s what happened with one Detroit car salesman. Fox 2 Detroit reports that this man, posing as a salesman, created an elaborate scam that involved lies and resold cars.
Ricardo Perez was at one point a salesperson at Dick Scott Jeep, Ram, Dodge, Chrysler in Plymouth, Michigan. But apparently just sticking to selling cars wasn’t enough for Perez. He was fired in the summer of 2021 for fraud and theft. Rather than try to find a position at another dealership, he decided to take his dealer contacts and continue grifting by creating an elaborate web of a scam.
In his grift, Perez would still pose as a salesperson from Dick Scott Jeep and offer customers what’s known as a lease pull ahead. Those are deals that get customers out of their current leases early and into a newer vehicle. What’s worse, the Covid pandemic played right into his game. From Fox 2:
Instead of meeting at the dealership – he used being Covid safe to his advantage, meeting customers in parking lots to make the exchange.
Of course, Perez wouldn’t actually return the car to the dealer. The person’s car would end up in his endless circle of theft: He’d either resell the vehicle or sell the person a car he stole from someone else by doing the same lease return scam.
He didn’t stop there, though. A person like this never does. It gets better. He’d actually go to dealers and fraudulently sign paperwork in their names so they’d get screwed on their “payments”:
He would actually go to dealerships and get vehicles but put them in their names and sign all the paperwork, sign their names,” Watters said.
Then, he’d tell them – their payments are less than the actual dealership was charging.
Perez would tell these people that their first three payments would be waived, so by the time the finance company contacted the customer for payment, they’d already be three months late. This would significantly impact their credit. These late notices are what sent people to contact local police. Perez has now been charged at multiple police stations in the Detroit area. And local authorities are left to clean up the mess he’s left behind.
We do have some of the vehicles that we are able to return back to some people. “We are trying our best to work with those people because they are absolutely, 100 percent, the victims.
YOU GOTTA HAVE THE UNDERCOAT!..........................
You know, my thoughts immediately went to Bill Macy’s ‘Fargo’ character as well.
That was a great movie!
Good movie, Fargo
Ditto.
That truecoat.
Ever count the number of dead because of that idiot?..............
He must have had a busy woodchipper...
They don’t have an Oscars for scams and con artists? Such a shame.
I actually know a guy who did something similar to this...only he figured out how to keep people’s trade-in cars, when selling them a new car, and put them in his name.
They could give out gold Smollets every year.
Based on a true story - the guy got caught because no one rents a wood chipper in the middle of Winter. The rental dealer called the Police.
He’s lucky he hasn’t been ‘taken care of’ so far.
Plymouth is not that far (mile wise, life style wise) from Detroit.
He clearly has a talent for inspiring trust in other people.
Some folks can look you in the eye and lie to your face with remarkable ease.
Speaking of “COMING OFF LEASE”… if you have a couple year old car that will be coming off lease, instead of turning it in at the end of the lease you can EXERCISE YOUR PURCHASE OPTION. The price you’d have to pay to get complete ownership of the car should be substantially less than its current (highly inflated) value. Dealers would try to fast talk you out of this, of course.
In your lease you have the option of purchasing it from the lending company for a predetermined price listed in the lease agreement.
If you don't want to purchase it, the lender will send someone to your home to inspect it then pick it up and take it away.
In the case of my 2019 model with only 19,000 miles, the purchase price is $15,800. All the same cars I've seen listed for sale are easily going for at least $20,000
“Ever count the number of dead because of that idiot?”
7: the trooper, the two kids in the car, his father-in-law, the guy in the booth in the parking garage, his wife and the “funny-looking guy” - not to mention ruining the lives of his son, Sheb Proudfoot, Grimsrud, everyone at the car dealership who are now probably out of jobs, essentially everyone except Jose Feliciano.
I always figured he needed the money due to gambling debts.
From the article:
“He would actually go to dealerships and get vehicles but put them in their names and sign all the paperwork, sign their names,” Watters said.”
I don’t believe I’ve ever financed anything without being positively identified.
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