Boom Times for Repo Guys

It's 10 p.m. Do you know where your car is? Max Pineiro knows where somebody's is, and he is about to steal it. Driving his Ford F-150 truck around a rough-and-tumble neighborhood of Rahway, N.J., on a Monday night, he and his partner, Sergio Costa, don't take long to find what they want, a red Honda Accord. Unlocking the car will be easy — they even have a key — but if there's an alarm, they are worried about disabling it before being caught.

Mr. Pineiro takes a deep breath. "O.K., I'm going in," he says to Mr. Costa. He walks briskly from his truck to the Accord and furtively unlocks it. The alarm shrieks, but a flick of his hand under the dash silences the electronic scream. Within 20 seconds, he has the engine engaged and is speeding down the street, a rosary still dangling from the rearview mirror. Mr. Costa speeds away in the truck.

He and the employees of his company, Elite Collateral Recovery and Investigations in Elizabeth, N.J., are just a handful of the thousands of repossessors in the United States. And business has never been better. All the cash floating around during the boom of the 1990's inspired some serious credit stretching, and now those bills can't be paid. "I've taken cars from celebs, pro ballplayers, you name it," Mr. Pineiro said. "Debt doesn't discriminate."

On that Monday alone, Mr. Pineiro got 51 new orders for cars, and big days like this aren't unusual. According to the repo trade association Time Finance Adjusters, banks took back some 2.25 million autos last year. "Repo companies are making money — a lot of money — right now," said Harvey C. Altes, chief executive of Time Finance.

Repo guys take everything from A.T.M.'s to office furniture to jet skis, but cars are their meat and potatoes. The autos may be leases or rentals that were never returned, but they are usually purchases with a stack of unpaid bills behind them. Banks focus on the business of lending; when they need to get their property back, they contract out.

And banks are doing a lot of contracting these days. At Ford Credit, the financing arm of Ford Motor, the number of loans that require repossession has jumped 30 percent in the last three years, to almost 200,000 cars last year. And at the auto lender AmeriCredit, that number has jumped from 3.6 percent of total loans in 2000, to 5.8 percent in 2002 and an expected 7.9 percent the first half of 2003.

TO stem these losses, lenders say they are increasing their credit requirements. Yet at the same time, they're also encouraging people to borrow by offering zero percent down or extending loans to 75 months from 60 months. Banks say that most of their clients have good credit histories; still, "you'll always have people whose circumstances change," said Nicholas G. Stanutz, an executive vice president at the Huntington Bank in Columbus, Ohio, and chairman of the auto finance committee of the Consumer Bankers Association. "The nature of the business is that you'll have repossessions."

In other words, creditors need the repo man. "Without repo guys, we'd lose millions of dollars every year," said Dan Jarvis, a spokesman for Ford Credit.

Reality TV shows portray repo men (and they are mostly men) as living-on-the-edge tough guys who carry guns and never take no for an answer. This cowboy image isn't fictitious; the industry is almost completely unregulated (Florida and California are among the few states to require licenses), so anyone with a tow truck and a coat hanger can get into the business. And each nabbed car (or pop, in repo lingo) brings at least $300 — not bad for a few minutes' work.

But most of these legal burglars aren't wild enough for prime time. Sure, they're tough: they're operating on adrenaline, working all night and living on caffeine, and they know how to disable the latest alarms and laugh at theft-prevention devices. But the most successful are executives first. To protect the bank's investment and themselves, they're fully insured and bonded. They test their employees for drug use. They belong to trade associations and — yawn — attend conventions. They don't even carry guns.

Instead, they arm themselves with the latest technology, like computers that can cut car keys and trucks that are outfitted with voice-activated global positioning systems to pinpoint addresses. Then there is the heavy equipment. That Ford F-150 that Mr. Pineiro uses may look like an ordinary pickup, but towing gear is hidden underneath; when it's activated, so is a tiny camera that transmits a black-and-white picture to a screen inside the cab to guide the equipment around the wheels. Sometimes Mr. Pineiro doesn't even have to leave the safety of his truck.

That's fine with him, since only about 15 percent of debtors willingly give up their wheels. Though confrontations don't happen often (less than 10 percent of the time), they do happen, and the repo guys have to be vigilant. "People usually know we're coming," Mr. Pineiro said, "so surprise is everything." If the debtor catches him and tells him to get lost, the law says he has to leave — unless he's a good sweet talker.

"You go out there trying to be like John Wayne, and you won't have much luck," said Dan Caldwell, a repo guy in Flint, Mich. "But 9 out of 10 times I can talk someone into letting me take the car."

Of course, sweet talking won't help much if the debtor is intent on violence. Money is probably already a problem — of course, taking away the person's ability to get to his job is likely to make it worse — and people with problems sometimes overreact. Ken Jongewaard, a repo man in Chicago for the last 13 years, has been shot at three times. "Not too bad," he said, even though the last time a bullet hit him in the hand.

When debtors aren't violent, they can be sneaky. They may paint the car, swap wheels with a friend, drive to Mexico or use a business card to cover the vehicle identification number — the only way to identify a car accurately. So repo men double as detectives, and some are licensed private investigators. That Monday night, Mr. Pineiro had two pops, but four other cars were missing in action. Repo guys can spend hours or days scouring neighborhoods for cars, checking back and back and back. "Eventually, people slip up," Mr. Pineiro said.

For Roy N., a repo man in Little Falls, Minn., who insisted that his surname not be used because others in his business might object to his speaking with a writer, it took two months before one debtor slipped up. Painstaking investigative work had gained him only a cellphone number — and when he called, the debtor taunted him, saying he would never get the car. Roy gave it right back. "I told him, `The day's coming when I'm going to find you,' " he said.

Finally, tipped off to the debtor's driving route one night, he staked out the road for 15 hours. It paid off. He followed the debtor to his girlfriend's house and grabbed the car while he was inside.

Besides fancy computer detective software, repo guys also use a time-tested battery of tricks. Want to find out if the debtor's at home — probably with the car? Call and pretend to have a delivery. Want to disguise the repo truck? Slap a sign on the side with the name of a construction company. Sometimes the tricks go too far. To get one debtor to call back (and therefore verify his number and address), a Texas repo firm left a fake but terrifying message in September 2001. It said that someone the debtor had slept with had tested positive for H.I.V. Because the man had coincidentally just had an AIDS test, the trick worked. When he realized it was a ruse, he sued for damages on grounds of emotional abuse and unfair business practice. The case is pending.

No matter the method, once repossessors find and nab a car, they inform the police that it has been repossessed, and the vehicle goes to a storage lot. Mr. Pineiro's lot is filled with everything from Camrys to Cherokees to Taurus wagons. Vehicles like Ferraris and Lexuses are garaged — even in the repo world they get special treatment. Personal property is removed and returned, but if the debt isn't paid after 10 or 15 days, the car goes to a dealer auction so the bank can recover some of its money.

It's not cheap to repossess a car: with fees and auction costs added in, banks stand to lose $6,000 to $9,000 a car, according to the Consumer Bankers Association. It's no wonder repossession is the bank's last resort. But when creditors simply can't work it out with a debtor, they turn to a firm like Mr. Pineiro's. He'll don his black clothing and gear up for another pop.

"It's never the same day twice," he said, entering a new location into the G.P.S. "When there's no more adrenaline rush in this business, you're done."

.....Jerry, a friend of mine got repoed....then they went after his wife's station wagon...she was in the supermarket shopping, comes out and can't find the car...calls the cops to report it stolen....that's how she found out it was repoed....Jerry caught hell at supper that night, then his wife packed her bags took the kids and left.....next day Jerry checks into Rehab for his percodan habit, gets clean and moves in with a cute little 20 year old blonde aerobics instructor he met at the Y....he says life is good now and he owes it all to the repo man....oh, and he had no problem getting another car; a brand new Esplanade...he's an orthopedic surgeon.

Good luck to everyone!

Stonewalls the Ant

You use a gadget called a slim jim.

They don't work on the newer cars going back at least 5 years.

One thing this article doesn't mention is the cost of buying a key for the repo man. You can get a key made if you know the VIN number (which the bank would know) but for you and I it would cost $100 because it has a computer in the key.

Any ticker symbols for the repo companies? Things are only going to get worse in this area.

The local repo company moved to a new yard triple the size of their previous one.

What I can't figure out is where are all the new and used cars are going. It would seem that we ought to be experiencing an explosion of used cars on the market which have to compete with the new cars sitting on the dealer lots. Maybe the government will just buy them all up and ship them over to Iraq as part of the reconstruction program. I have a feeling that the taxpayer is going to be paying top dollar for a bunch of excess inventory in everything from toilet seats and cell phones to computers and cars. Hummm

Richard W.

In other words, creditors need the repo man. "Without repo guys, we'd lose millions of dollars every year," said Dan Jarvis, a spokesman for Ford Credit.

My first thought is why are they giving loans to unqualified customers. I realize that many repos are based on drastic changes in job circumstance, but there are many more that are the result of lending to people that are a bad credit risk prior to the loan.

I've been waiting for that flood of cheap late-model used cars as well. I think that dealers are stockpiling them, hoping to sell the new ones down first. Not much margin in a used repo'd car in a buyer's market.

Hi all,
My name is Max Pineiro and I am the owner of Elite Collateral Recovery, Elite Search Team and Repoland.com. I am also a Licensed Private Detective in NJ. The article that you read above was written on our agency. Several important point were missed by the writer who spent 2 full days with our agents. The majority of licensed and bonded recovery agencies throughout the country run a very respectable business. I took insult to my introduction that reads "Max Pineiro knows where someones car is and he is about to steal it". I do not consider my agents or myself to be thieves. Many of our agents are former police officers and private investigators. One of our agents was recently hired as a Secret Service Agent for the Department of Treasury. I am an x-law enforcement officer and concider the service that we provide to the financial community, a very important one. Without our service, where would the lending institutions be today? Where would interest rates be? Would we all be able to even afford financing a vehicle? Most folks that do have a vehicle repossessed, know that it is coming. Our agency has been involved in over 30,000 repossessions over the past 17 years. Most people that we have been confronted by do understand that we are doing our job and are usually only interested in getting the personal belongings out of the car. Professional Recovery Agencies are bonded, insured and certified. Of course there are the few tow jockeys that run around calling themselves repossessors when in fact they have no clue of the laws that govern our business. These are the same guys that usually get interviewed on nationwide TV and tell everyone how dangerous this job is and how many times they have been shot at. After 17 years in this business I can assure you that if you carry yourself professionally and are properly trained you will seldom have a war story to tell. I have enjoyed everyones posts and replys on this forum. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask.

Thanks,
Max Pineiro

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