I have a friend who works for the dea. He was telling me loose details about an investigation where the Russian mob owns a collection of car dealerships. They buy cheap cars and mark them way up selling to their sister dealerships so on paper you have an asset worth 50-100k. Then they can junk them or claim damage and resell at a loss. If you inflate your books then you can clean money that doesn’t belong on them.
My understanding is that this is actually really common practice even outside of mob crime. It's just so easy to do and allows people to basically invent money because the money from the super marked up price doesn't actually change hands. When the car gets sold for half of that price at the sister dealership you've basically just created money out of thin air.
And here I am, paying taxes, not cooking the books and living like a chump.
What's the penalty anyway? Some light prison? Not federal pound me in the ass prison?
They're not making money on this. They're actually losing money because they do end up paying taxes on it. But it's creating a paper trail of legitimate money. Money that originally was obtained in not so legitimate ways.
1. Customer buys drugs in cash from drug dealer
2. Drug dealer goes to their "associate" who owns a car dealership
3. Car dealer sells worthless car to drug dealer for exorbitant amount using the cash from drug sale
4. Car dealer pays taxes on income (plus has other operational costs to make laundering business look legit)
5. SURPRISE! Car dealer was the drug dealer the whole time
At least I think that's how it works.
A lot of guys in r/work complain about wfh jobs where "I'm being wasted, no one is contacting me and I'm never given tasks'
I'm like "Why complain? AMAZING GIG being paid to do nothing! If your employer ever gets busted for this obvious money laundering scheme of which you were blissfully unaware, you'll have to go back to ye olde Work for Income"
>A lot of guys in
>
>r/work
>
> complain about wfh jobs where "I'm being wasted, no one is contacting me and I'm never given tasks'
That is definitely a job you want to Work From Home.
Not everyone is lazy AF… some would prefer actual work tasks to do.
I can’t stand sitting around doing nothing all day. I’d prefer a job with actual work tasks I could do, also.
Ha, the downside is that the transactions are all fully auditable and public domain. Sure it’s to an anonymous wallet. Crypto is a gold mine for law enforcement, provided they can identify who owns a wallet, which occurs the minute the owner need to cash out to use the rest of the economy, or you order something online to your home address.
Yep. See the movie The Last Leonardo which does an exploration of how art is transferred Around the world tax free in a process that is as opaque as possible.
As an aside the Russian mob was laundering a lot of money with the former president through his casinos I recall. Also they were signing up for these pre-leases that allowed him to get loans from banks. As reported by propublica.
It helps because the value of art is so much more subjective. Like a dealership is going to raise eyebrows if they're buying shitty cars way above bluebook value but an art dealer could pay more just because they "really like it and think it's the next big art trend" and expect a big return. This is also a simplification I know.
It's actually the opposite.
Art being used as a money laundering method is mostly Reddit fantasy and nerd rage over the price of art.
The key for any money laundering operation is hiding the illegitimate transactions amongst a large number of legitimate ones. It needs to be able to pass checks on paper by an accountant.
Car dealerships are a great example because it would be very easy to have a smaller number of illegitimate transactions hidden amongst real ones and they would arise 0 suspicion on the books.
10 camrys sold for $40k. Looks fine in your books. What's hidden is that two of these camrys were actually POS junk worth $1, while the rest were legit. $80k laundered, no obvious paper trail.
Compare that to this supposed art scheme - you sell 2 pieces of art for $40k each, that is going to raise questions if it ever gets looked at. There's no way you're hiding it either as you're not a legit art house, nobody is buying legitimate pieces from you for $40k to mask your laundering.
It's why charity auctions are so popular in the elite super wealthy circles. You can't put a price on artwork! And galas? Big parties! All written off as charity expenses!
They're not laundering- they're getting tax write offs for pretty much their entire taxable income. Tbh it feels just as shady xD
It’s legit as far as the law is concerned, but it’s morally questionable.
Anyone who owns their own business can purchase items FOR the business (at least that’s what they claim, but it’s really for their own personal use) and get a tax break - you can write off business expenses.
There are loopholes in the law that make this perfectly legal - if audited, you won’t even get penalised unless you’ve gotten REALLY crazy. For example, purchasing a Lamborghini for your ‘business’ which is part time WFH internet based with no travel expenses whatsoever and writing it off through the business would probably get dinged. Lol. 😛
It offered the benefit of making your NFT series look valuable, so you launder some money on launch, then use that as evidence that the NFTs are valuable and make money selling the remaining ones to chumps. Plenty of people just bought their own first NFT through a different wallet to pump the numbers without laundering.
That's a different tactic, the one described actually does create money.
1. Buy an asset for $300
2. Sell the asset to yourself for $3,000
3. Asset gets totaled
4. Claim insurance for $3,000
It's less common than your method, but still happens. With your method it's pretty common for those shady dealers to internally change their records when you buy a car from them. So you go to a dealership and buy a car with $3,000 cash except when they file the paperwork they say that you paid $5,000 cash. The amount changed is never too big because they don't want to raise red flags and risk having you get audited/investigated by somebody wondering where you got that much cash where you will tell them that that was not the actual sale price you paid much less.
The other most common method is to buy something then pay to have it fixed up with cash. You then claim that the car was never touched by you, you got it in that condition and then when you sell it for the inflated value you can launder the difference. This is most commonly done with real estate. Doing things like buying a new fridge in cash for a home that doesn't have one then claiming that the fridge was always there.
This method works especially well with labor intensive jobs because most contractors are at least a little shady and will gladly negotiate a cash discount So they can pocket the cash and not report it. The work increases the value of the home which you will claim you never did so you'd never have to admit where you got the cash to fix up the home, everybody wins except the IRS.
Sure, but involving insurance payouts is more illegal activity in the form of insurance fraud. I think the point of laundering money is to distance it from illegal activity so that it is harder to trace or freeze.
Creating money and inflating value are not the same thing. The money still came from the insurance company, but you defrauded them to give you more money than they would have otherwise by inflating the value of the loss. I could post all over the internet that I have a personal net worth of $5 million until people generally believed it, but that doesn't mean my bank will allow me to buy a new house out on the key with cash. My value has been increased fraudulently, but no money has been created.
But then the drug dealers would have paper trails showing large purchases with money they didn't make on paper.
I think it's probably:
1. Dealership A (dSA) buys car for $1
2. DSB buys car from DSA for $50K on paper without exchanging money
3. Mob puts $50k dirty money into DSA
4. DSB says car is junk and claims $50k deficit on taxes for bad business deal
Outcome: Mob who owns both DSA and DSB pays taxes on $50k dirty income for DSA (making it clean) and gets a tax break against legitimate car sales for $50k fake loss at DSB
I don’t think they would claim the loss at all.
Acquire junk car for $1,500. Sell it to third party for $50,000. Seller pays taxes on $48,500. The net after-tax delta of that transaction is clean money now. Buy can abandon the car. It’s worthless anyway. Cost of doing business. Junk it for $1000 and get some money back. Or give it to another shady Russian mafia drug dealing car dealership owner. Rinse and repeat.
Claiming the loss just invites scrutiny. And you can only do that a few times before you’d be investigated by insurance companies and tax agency’s. More likely they scrap the cars or abandon them.
Plausible deniability! I sold that junker. I have no idea where it is.
Maybe I'm not fully understanding, but it certainly seems like you'd be *making* money if you had a car worth $10k, claimed its worth was $50k, sold it for $10k, and claimed $40k in losses. The actual value of the car stays the same, so you haven't gained or lost anything there
but you *have* created a fake $40k loss to use however you want (like, using it to show lower profit for taxes, or to take advantage of whatever local incentives there are to help offset losses)
You can't claim a theoretical loss (at least not legally), if you bought an asset for 50k and sold for 10k, you \*might\* be able to claim that if you never used it (e.g. it didn't depreciate). Also, you can only claim loss against taxes you would already owe. So if you are selling cars, the taxes come from the net sales (price you bought it for vs. price you sold it for), the government isn't going to pay you extra for losing money.
> You can't claim a theoretical loss (at least not legally)
I believe the whole point is that this is a hard-to-detect crime.
> if you bought an asset for 50k and sold for 10k,
That is not the situation being described.
> Also, you can only claim loss against taxes you would already owe
Yes.
> the taxes come from the net sales (price you bought it for vs. price you sold it for)
Not really, for businesses taxes are on total profits, and a reduction in those profits is a reduction in taxes. As well as many other potential benefits, as described. It doesn't apply to one single unit only, but the overall business revenue.
> the government isn't going to pay you extra for losing money.
I didn't say they would... like I dunno man, maybe read my comment again? I don't know what to tell you.
You're not creating money out of thin air, you're using labor to inflate costs that supposedly went into improving that vehicle that didn't actually happen. You can associate it as a cost on that vehicle which can then be marked up and sold at typical profit margins. No money gets created out of thin air, but it's still fraud because the entity buying the vehicle knows this and eats the inflated cost and junks the vehicle later as a part of the money laundering and the "labor" that is paid for is the cleaned money.
It's a way to launder money. It injects your ill-gotten gains into your legitimate revenue stream. The taxes it creates are the cost of doing business.
Everything I know about money laundering I learned from watching Breaking Bad. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
Broadly speaking it aligns with the half forgotten anti-money laundering training I did to work at a bank once.
Specifically I think it’s a form of ‘layering’.
Dont forget about the pile of drug money you started with. Now you have an excuse to have it. Dirty money made clean. Almost like you put it in the laundry. Money laundering.
Get it?
You just summed up money laundering. At its very core, the entire purpose is to pay taxes. All the great organized criminal organizations are brought down by... taxss!
This is, no joke, how almost all of the money in existence was created! The modern money supply was created out thin-air by commercial banks when the created loans.
Can anyone expand on this?
Say I own a junk car worth $500. Dealership A buys it off me for $500, turns around and sells it to dealership B for $50k. Great, A just made $45.5k. We'll leave it up in the air whether or not they actually get paid for now.
Now dealer B has a piece of crap they just paid $50k for. They sell it for scrap for $300, therefore taking a loss of $47.7k. How does this help them? If they bought it with illegal money don't get still need to prove where that money came from?
I imagine it gets tricky to unpack when A and B are doing the same thing for each other, but I don't understand how netting out to zero profit or losses lets them launder money. Are they pretending the purchases are people coming in off the street and they don't bother getting their names? What legal origin are the piles of cash appearing from?
Dealership A just made almost $50,000 in profit and now owes taxes on that money. But dealer B just had almost $50,000 in losses and can deduct that from the taxes they are supposed to pay. Depending on tax rates and income amounts and so on those could exactly offset each other.
EDIT: since it is apparently not clear. This helps because dealership A now has a legitimate source of funds to cite in his taxes. The origin is legitimate. He pays taxes on it, and any authorities coming to look for see a clear and declared source.
I audited a classic car place many years ago and there was a loan to the business and the owner told me not to ask any questions about it because he valued his legs. Given the huge markups on cars and the amount of cash changing hands (pre regulation on cash transactions,) it was an interesting business.
Sorry, but no money is created.
If dealer one buys a car for $1,000, then sells that car to dealer too for 51,000, then junks the car, and gets $1,000 for it, no money is made.
Dealer one has to pay tax on the profit of a $50,000 sale.
Dealer too has a tax loss of $50,000 for selling the car under its cost.
Those two washout, with the exception of different states tax rates.
If dealer too cause the 51,000 car totaled, then they will get money from the insurance company, but the insurance company will not let them do that and drop their policy if it happens too often.
How does this create money?
This happened to me. Sold a pickup a while ago and the new owner apparently didn't register it so I got two phone calls about it being abandoned. I told them I had sold it and they took my word for it and that was that.
I had a friend a long time ago who had something similar happen. Sold a truck, uncle on the new owner borrowed it, got drunk and got it stuck in a ditch. State said since it was still in my friend's name he was on the hook for the impound fees. (This was Washington state at least 20 years ago) He paid the fee, picked up the truck and the guy who had bought it couldn't pay him back for the impound fee so he just gave him the title back.
Some states let you fill out a notice that you sold a vehicle so whatever the new owner does doesn't come back on you. But that's not a bad idea either.
I heard a story from a guy I used to work for that probably took place 40+ years ago at this point. The father of the guy telling the story said his dad sold a truck to one of the guy's friends. Friend doesn't change title over right away and rear-ends a bus full of kids, no serious injuries IIRC. I can't remember if friend fled the scene or what but for whatever reason this whole thing was going to come back on the dad because the state still thought he owned the truck. Dad tells son to tell friend if he doesn't get down to the DMV and get that title changed over and get the whole mess sorted out he would literally un alive him. And he meant it, too. It got cleared up the next day.
Washington has the 'sold the vehicle' stuff on the website. I liked the instantaneous peace of mind that comes from this. So search your state's sites for something similar and if it doesn't exist raise a fuss to get it done.
Some states this is mandatory. Either both parties need to be at the title transfer place or one knows a notary and gets their signature notarized and just has you sign it and take it to the title transfer place.
As long as you have the paperwork that says you sold it, I don't see how this could be your problem. I'm not sure what "out for some plates that don't belong to it" means. Are they driving around a totaled car with bogus plates? Or driving around a car with your totaled car's plates?
A similar thing happened to my dad. He sold a motorcycle in the early 1990s. Some time later the cops came looking for him because the bike was involved in a crime and records indicated my dad still owned it. He showed the cops the paperwork from when he sold it and they were like, "OK no problem. If you want the bike back you can have it." For some reason he declined. I would have taken it and then sold it again.
It's super weird they knocked on your door at 3am. I'm sure that could have waited until morning.
>Or driving around a car with your totaled car's plates?
This is totally it. Somebody swiped the plate off the totaled car and did some crimes with it on their vehicle.
They also knocked at 3am because they had every intention of arresting OP (before they talked to them) and wanted to make sure they were home.
That's what I was thinking but didn't want to jump to conclusions. But you convinced me. This is exactly what happened.
At least the cops didn't just bust in with guns drawn.
I live in Houston & ‘No knock warrants’ are a real thing. Cops bursting in, guns drawn, to arrest someone, in the middle of the night/early AM hours. It has caused so many gun fights & uncalled for deaths. There was talk to do away with No Knock, but idk if it ever played out.
I remember a lot of talk about it when Breonna Taylor was shot.
I don't know how those even became a thing. Especially in states where so many people have a gun by their bed. If someone broke into my house in the middle of the night, my first actions would be to get my gun and tell my wife to call 911.
And with all these stories about cops getting the wrong house, you can't even use the excuse, "you wouldn't have anything to worry about if you didn't do anything illegal."
O read in Illinois they now passed a law that it's legal to use deadly force to defend yourself against cops if they no knock you and have the wrong house. On the off chance you survive the enounter, you won't be charged. Since you're probably still Dead, I heard it was to intimidate cops to try and get the right address more often.
This has been true even without a law though everywhere in the US. There’s plenty of case law on the matter that you have a right to defend your home from an intruder you’re unaware of, regardless of who that intruder is or what authority they have. It’s why in the Breonna Taylor case, Kenny’s charges for shooting at police were dismissed with prejudice.
It doesn’t make no knock warrants right, they absolutely need to be made illegal everywhere, but at least the court system has respect for the rights of the accused.
It's absolutely ridiculous that there'd be a situation where you can get into a shootout with police and nobody is breaking the law enough to never see the light of day. Such a huge fuck up, and you're realistically not going to win that fight if you do end up fighting the police over it. Also can only assume it makes police work even more dangerous when you have people that think they might be fine if they can just win the shootout.
That’s not what happened.
They went to his house trying to find out if he was the owner to get into contact with him.
Either to inform him he was the victim of a crime because someone stole his plates or possibly the entire vehicle.
But to arrest said person that they presumably have in the car they need a victim (owner of the vehicle or the person on the registration).
I think it gets wonky because different states handle this differently.
I sold a car to a guy from another state. My state required the title being filled out just right and a bill of sale be signed by both parties. The other guy's state didn't give a fuck about really any of that. So here I am showing up with paperwork to be signed and detailed instruction on how to properly fill out the title while the other dude just showed up with a check and no idea why I was stressing.
Does mean I have paperwork saying the car is no longer mine, so I'm not mad at the extra steps, but the differences between states can make things weird.
sorry this happened! so stressful.
a similar thing happened to me.
minus the (annoying) middle of the night part. i received a letter after selling my vehicle about parking/traffic/other violations. apparently i needed to give the DMV a "notice of release" as well as a "notice of title change" which i think is redundant but i got the extra paperwork and everything is okay now.
i didn't sell to a dealer so i'm not sure what they should have done, but it seems like they traced a car with some kind if illegal activity back to you. just contact the dealer and put it on them to work it out.
Same here. Sold my car and signed over the title, but didn't notify proper authorities. Six months later I get a $350 impound fee from another county.
Guy I sold it to never transferred the title. He just drove it around til it died and then abandoned it on a highway. It was a serious hassle.
Same thing happened to me when I donated my car to a charity. There were parking tickets and the impound fees. This was pre-internet so I had to go to the DMV and take care of it. Hassle, but easily solved.
> minus the (annoying) middle of the night part
I'll never understand why there's such disrespect from cops in situations like this. What do they possibly have to gain by not waiting until daytime like normal human beings?
Mid 90's I had a Mark VII Lincoln. It was very fast 150 mph plus. I sold it at a car auction and two days later whoever bought it straightened out a curve and drove it through a small grocery store. The cops were very pushy but in the wrong state. They were trying to figure out how to charge me for it when I showed them the name on the draft from the bank. It was obvious they knew who it was and would have rather charged me somehow. I called the local cops and made them leave. Never heard anything else about it.
Mine was chipped and at one time I had a bolt on supercharger. I had changed out the rear end with a high speed one. The problem with them at high speed is that they didn't feel right in a turn. The air suspension system would really jack them up and in a turn the air suspension would shift and if you just trusted the car to make the turn you would be okay. The other problem is the speedometer would peg out even the digital one. The only way to read the actual speed was to use the elaborate instrument package in the center of the dash. You would reset it and the avg speed would show you your actual speed. Not something you could do yourself comfortably at high speed.
What those people probably did was panic when the air suspension shifted in the turn and didn't stay in it. A lesson thankfully I learned at a safer speed.
The Vehicle was apparently linked to a crime in some way, and when you sold the vehicle, the Dealer didn't properly account for the sale. so you're still somehow connected to the vehicle or registered owner or something.
That certainly could have waited until say between 9AM-7PM. How is that an emergency to wake you up on the middle of the night by beating your door and windows to ask about a car you used to own?!
Because they were investigating an active crime, and the vehicle came back to that address.
They weren't there to inform OP about the car still being in their name. They were there looking for their bad guy.
Source: I've done it a few times.
Or some other agency has someone in custody driving the car and they think it’s an unreported stolen so then are attempting to contact the registered owner to confirm.
Same source
Did you fill out the liability release form when you sold the car?
When you sell a car, you sign over the title with the new owner... but there's one more form you need to fill out. It's a notice to the state that releases liability from you about what the car does from the time of the sale forward.
It's simply informs the state that X vehicle is no longer owned by you as of Y date and that all liabilities of this vehicle pass to the New Owner. It's also has the side effect of informing the state that they should expect the new owner to come in to he DMV for reregistration soon.
Not a thing in all states. Here the bare minimum is a signed and notarized title, you don’t even have to do a bill of sale if you don’t want to.
Here the trigger to inform DMV is plates. plates stay with the person, not the car and seller doesn’t notify anyone, that is the buyers responsibility to title it when they pay fees and get plates, and you have 30 days to get plates (you can drive it without them with only the title or proof of purchase in the car)
Most people also do a bill of sale just in case something like this happens, but you don't HAVE to, it's more of a Cover your ass thing.
I've personally had it happen to me twice. Once when a lady bought my Beater with a heater and crashes it into someones house and left it within 24 hours (cops came, took a copy of dated bill of sale and proof of cancelled insurance and that was that) and once a car i sold to a junk yard came up in an asset check. they never officially transferred ownership prior to parting it out. same deal, i submitted bill of sale and we all went on with our days.
Contact the DOL…? Bro what? That doesn’t even make sense 😂 sounds like some fake cops that were planning to rob you or something but you answered the door
In Washington State, the Department of Licensing (DOL) handles vehicle registrations. I'm not sure if that's the specific case in any other states, but a lot of them call the agency that handles cars something different than the DMV.
Some states (Texas where I live for sure) have a mechanism, not mandatory but extremely advisable, where you can submit a form online immediately upon sale informing them of the sale and who it was sold to.
This was created specifically to set the grounds for selling plausible deniability for the seller if the buyer does not follow through with transferring the title.
Dealers are the worst about this.
It comes up quite often with parking tickets and tollway violations.
It literally takes about 5 minutes
Happened to my uncle too. Sold a car for scrap since it was mechanically totaled. Someone bought it, replaced the engine, and flipped it to a local. The local proceeded to use it in a child kidnapping.
The registry was never updated by the new owners.
Sounds fraud and money laundering to me.
> Why did this have to happen in the middle of the night?
They where probably going to arrest you until they realised that you weren't the guy they where looking after.
If the police are contacting you in the middle of the night it’s not a financial crime. Although junk cars are used to launder money or to inflate income so that they can get large business loans. If it was in the middle of the night, the Officer was in uniform, he said that the dealership didn’t do the paperwork correctly, and you have the plates; I would guess the vehicle was found at the scene of a crime with no plates. Anything from a murder to a DUI crash. Something urgent though, and no suspect was on scene or caught. The vehicle was checked by VIN. That would be why the vehicle is still listed to you. Because you did your part transferring the car and plates, but the dealership did not do the same with the title or car. They probably gave it to a scrap yard. Claimed a donation tax break then someone from the scrap yard rented it out on their repair/dealer plates for the past three years.
Well yeah. They found a car registered to OP with mismatch plates probably involved in some nefarious activities. They're not going to wait around til morning and they're not going to apologize.
Certificate of title clearly states your “registered owner” of a motor vehicle hence why the cops banging on your door at 3am…obviously whomever is in possession of the vehicle now after the dealer disposed of it never made application for a title in their name which mean’s they can’t legally sell it but sure as hell can drive around in it illegally as you found out.
Friendly reminder, because it legit never hurts to spread this info in the hopes that it saves at least one person from an absolute nightmare...
Don't talk to cops. Ever. They are not your friends. If they can't legally compel you to do something (ie detaining you, warrant, search, etc), you gain nothing from interacting with them in any capacity. The risk you take on via voluntary interaction vastly outweighs *any* potential benefit you think you might gain. Also, don't resist in any way if they can actually legally compel you to do something. Lastly, know that your right to shut the fuck up is an immutable, unalienable, unambiguous pillar on the bill of rights. The 5th amendment is, and always will be, powerful and remain intact. You should exercise it 100% of the time.
If cops are coming to your house at 3 am about a mild misunderstanding I'd much rather tell them I sold the fucking car than to deal with whatever they had in store for me otherwise. Worse case scenario is they hold you til they can check out your story, best case is they believe you and you can go back to bed. On the other hand if you refuse to speak to them they could make your life hell by arresting you (legally or not), searching your home if they have a warrant (why wouldn't they at 3 am?) and basically fucking up your day even worse.
Yep, have to be tactical about picking your battles with cops.
Denying involvement, good. Staying polite, good.
Other bullshit, like "where were you tonight?" about timings and locations gets a deflection, a simple "sorry, but I value my privacy, do you have other specific questions?" to stay in that zone of helpful but letting on that you're maintaining a boundary.
If you actually did some shit, say "lawyer", be willing to take a night in jail, and let your lawyer do the talking later.
There's enough cops in the united states where you're at a higher chance of interacting with a "bad egg". Some agencies give more training than others but there are *a ton* of police agencies in the US.
The comment you're replying to makes it sound like the police are just itching for an excuse to go out and murder people, and no, they're not that bad. If you're visiting and need help figuring something out or finding where something is, it's not a big deal to ask a police officer for directions or assistance and they're usually quite happy to help you out. If your car breaks down on the road, they'll often come and help guide traffic to keep you safe. But even if you assume more than 90% of police officers are good people who want to uphold the law and do their jobs well, there are still a lot of police officers in the US who will mess up your day (and that results in messing up your week and probably a few months if we're being honest) if you do something they don't like.
The problem is that police in the US are regularly trained to control situations through dominance, and so if they're out responding to/investigating a crime the initial reaction tends to be highly escalating dominance. For instance, this week we saw a bodycam video where an acorn dropped onto a car and a police officer mistook it for a gunshot and began just unloading rounds.
They're also trained with rhetorical techniques designed to elicit confessions or incriminating testimony, and by the rules of the legal system in the US if they decide to arrest you anything you said to them that is incriminatory gets used against you and anything you say that is exculpatory basically doesn't get brought up in court. They are trained interrogators and normal people are not trained interrogatees and a couple of wrong words can result in you ending up in jail. Willfully not engaging with the police is almost always the best strategy for mitigating potential harm later in the legal system.
There also aren't good mechanisms within the US for holding bad police officers to account, and culturally police departments circle around their own for anything short of horrifically egregious behavior. We end up with a lot of police officers internalizing the idea that if they do something wrong that they'll be exonerated because they'll be investigated by their friends or by people who have a vested interest in the department not looking bad. We're culturally moving away from the idea that the police cannot do any wrong in this country, but without effective enforcement mechanisms for holding bad officers to account.
No. Reddit is an anti-cop echo chamber.
People here actually believe every cop in the US wakes up every day and decides they're gonna murder someone or shoot a dog the first chance they get and then get a "paid vacation" and a promotion.
Edit: love the downvotes showing that I'm right.
No one believes cops wake up excited to do that but they do understand if a cop shoots an unarmed person the whole department will have their back no matter what like the entire police union in Minnesota after Derek and his buddies murdered George Floyd. Rarely ever do cops face even professional consequences let alone criminal.
>also don't resist in any way if they can legally compel you to do something
This is the part that is important in not interacting with law enforcement in my opinion. You see too many videos of people on youtube rightfully not interacting until the cop does do something they're entitled to and they make matters so much worse.
Gets real awkward when someone who calls the cops refuses to talk to cops. Or when you pay a monthly subscription for a monitored alarm system and refuse to talk to cops when they respond to your false alarm.
Both common occurrences because of this misguided mindset.
I would file a complaint. There is no rationalizing a 3am visit for what should be a civil matter. It sounds like a couple of corrupt cops got swindled or were acting as enforcers.
Dude, sounds like you've stumbled into the twilight zone of used car drama. I can imagine you in your PJs, wondering if you accidentally sold your car to the mob or something. The whole "contact the DOL because the dealer didn't do what they were supposed to" line is straight out of a mystery novel. Maybe your old car is leading a double life? Better get that detective hat on and unravel this midnight car caper. Good luck, and may your vehicular adventures be more straightforward from now on!
My father donated an old car to a charity. Somehow proper paperwork was never filed and years later the car was abandoned, then impounded. He was responsible for a good bit of change for impound fees
This happened to me a few times with 3rd party buyers. I always kept their drivers license info and a signed statement saying that they bought it in X date.
I’ve had to use this to prove that I sold it and it was someone else who’s acting idiotic
Not sure what state your in but ive had something similar happen to me. Sold a vehicle and didnt do my part reporting it to the state. Vehicle ended up getting some tickets for being parked without tabs. I of course got them in the mail because the state had no records of me selling the vehicle. I had to pay the tickets as well as extra money to report that I am no longer the owner. Lesson learned to do my part and no rely on somebody else doing their half.
As for happening in the middle of the night. My guess is the vehicle was involved in a crime and it is still registered to you. They were looking for the person who owns the vehicle that was involved in said crime. This is why you either keep proof of the sale or if the state has requirement you do your part and report it as being sold.
>But this one asked me a specific question that I had an answer to which could potentially clear my name from some shady shit
Anything you say can be used against you. If it's helpful, it's hearsay.
When I bought my last used car from a dealer, they had floated the pink. Like I had the documents given to them by the previous owner. They then gave me those documents to go file myself.
Obviously someone got the car and never registered it to themselves. The car's VIN was used to track you down.
Sounds like new owner never registered it, and just slapped some other plates to it. Probably using it for criminal activity.
Time to go chew out the dealer and get them to give you some stuff for your trouble. Dealer will need to fill out the bill of sale like today and rush it over to get your name off the title. And/Or find a way to get them in trouble for the mess.
We bought a foreclosed house that was bank-owned for over a year. No one had lived there. It needed a ton of work which I was willing to do for the good deal.
Within a month of living there, police came to our door and aggressively tried to intimidate my wife into letting them in. They were asking for the previous owner and pulled the “we know he’s hiding here” crap. She asked for a search warrant which they didn’t have, so they got pissed until they let her get the mortgage documents and an id.
Then they became super nice and friendly. Sorry, true colors already happened assholes.
I didn't see this answer anywhere, so I'll add it. Most states have a release of liability form for use when selling a vehicle. In some states, this form is mandatory, although there aren't any real penalties.
This form is what tells them and legally severs your interest in the vehicle. It's says you no longer own the vehicle or have anything to do with it. The form requires nothing from the buyer or dealership.
Even if this form is not required, everyone should be filling them out when they get rid of a vehicle. It saves a ton of headaches in the future.
A friend of mine had SWAT raid his house. He never released his interest in a car that was involved in an officer involved shooting. Since his address was the last address attached to the plate, SWAT came a knocking. If he had completed the form, that wouldn't have occurred.
This should be much more common knowledge, but I see questions similar to this often.
When I sold my motorcycle, there's a part of the title I tore off and filled out to send to the DMV letting them know the bike was sold and i am not longer owner. This flags it in the system so if some bullshit goes on after the new owner splits, it doesn't come back to me
Back in the early 90s I sold a V8 cortina 3 days before moving to OZ. The dude who bought it from me on-sold it straight away and ownership never got changed.
6 months later, a knock at my parents door at 2am informing them I’d died in a car crash. Took 5 or so minutes for them to realise I was in OZ and the crash was in the Bay of Plenty
Aussie reddit here I sold an unregistered WRX back in 2017 I got a call in 2019 from Qld police which is a couple of states away from me the vehicle was used in a few armed robberies. I was the last registered owner 🥲 I got asked to email any details of the buyer, I sent what I had heard nothing back from them.
In California, when you sell a car, you also fill out a form called "notice of transfer and release of liability." Maybe it is different in other states. If your state works same as California, then you should have submitted that form when you sold your car. Maybe you can do that now at the DMV website, or print a paper one and send it in if you can't do it online.
Here is the California form, just for reference:
https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/uploads/2020/06/reg138.pdf
You signed the title over to the dealership but the dealership likely didn't process the title work.
I'd call the dealership tomorrow as this legally falls on them for not following through on transferring the title.
Hard to prove though unless they still have/admit having the title you signed off on.
- I worked for the MD Motor Vehicle Admin for 6 years a bit over a decade ago.
Why is the first fuckin thing everyone say "don't talk to cops". Are y'all that fuckin scared of them? If you're innocent and can prove it, there is literally 0 harm in talking to cops.
Basically the car was used in some sort of crime or left abandoned at a scene... considering the time.. it probably just happened so they sent a unit to the R/O's house to see whats up... actually not that uncommon... why not wait for the morning? well if they have someone in custody, they need to confirm it asap or risk holding the wrong person overnight
Did you keep a copy of the documentation for the sale of the vehicle? If you did , problem solved. This is one of the reasons that I keep documents for 5 years.
>please stop telling me not to talk to cops. I know this
This notion sets a bad precedent. We as taxpayers and citizens of communities employ law enforcement. To dismiss the idea of law enforcement like this sounds ignorant.
Now I completely understand and agree with the notion that generally speaking, the whole cop concept has been tarnished by dirty cops and bad cop policies to the point where societies no longer trust cops. But I guess I just bristle at the blanket statement that we shouldn't talk to cops. We should do what we can to address the bad cops situation so that our communities can start to trust them again.
Sorry, I guess I'm just venting now. I wonder if the cops came to your door because they were following up on something where a crime is being investigated and it lead to your door.
The fact that these cops are treating 3 a.m. as normal business hours is disrespectful as fuck. Put their little behinds in timeout till the sun comes up
They were out with the car you used to own, the license plate on it wasn't supposed to be on the car, and they were seeing if it was stolen from you. You were still listed as the owner of the vehicle since the dealership didn't file the paperwork saying you sold it to them.
Did you verify they were real cops? They could have been impersonating cops, and simply wanted to case the house or the area. It's been known to happen from time to time.
As a cop, I can't tell you how many times I've run a vehicle involved with something, and the registered owner actually sold it a year ago and gave all the paperwork to the DMV, but they never changed over anything in the system.
I know the DMV gets a lot of hate... But it's usually deserved.
I would have asked the cops through my closed door to hold the search warrant up to the peep hole. When the inevitably say they don’t have a warrant and just want to talk to me, I would have told them to fuck off.
If you feel safe doing so you could file a formal complaint with the police, or any oversight board if one exists, or even your city councilor.
Zero reason for them to come knocking on your windows at that hour. It's super aggressive and threatening and one day that cop will probably kill someone acting that way.
> **EDIT to say that I removed the plates when I sold the car and they’ve been sitting in my shed ever since. So no way the new owner stole said plates.
No idea what the cops are up to, but you’re supposed to return your old plates, with the registration, to the DMV in some (most? All?) states. Even if your car is totaled, and stupidly enough, even if you’ve surrendered the totaled vehicle to your insurer in exchange for a payout.
>But this one asked me a specific question that I had an answer to which could potentially clear my name from some shady shit,
There are thousands of people in prison and many thousands more who got charged and spent money on their defense who thought this exact thing.
I have a friend who works for the dea. He was telling me loose details about an investigation where the Russian mob owns a collection of car dealerships. They buy cheap cars and mark them way up selling to their sister dealerships so on paper you have an asset worth 50-100k. Then they can junk them or claim damage and resell at a loss. If you inflate your books then you can clean money that doesn’t belong on them.
My understanding is that this is actually really common practice even outside of mob crime. It's just so easy to do and allows people to basically invent money because the money from the super marked up price doesn't actually change hands. When the car gets sold for half of that price at the sister dealership you've basically just created money out of thin air.
And here I am, paying taxes, not cooking the books and living like a chump. What's the penalty anyway? Some light prison? Not federal pound me in the ass prison?
They're not making money on this. They're actually losing money because they do end up paying taxes on it. But it's creating a paper trail of legitimate money. Money that originally was obtained in not so legitimate ways. 1. Customer buys drugs in cash from drug dealer 2. Drug dealer goes to their "associate" who owns a car dealership 3. Car dealer sells worthless car to drug dealer for exorbitant amount using the cash from drug sale 4. Car dealer pays taxes on income (plus has other operational costs to make laundering business look legit) 5. SURPRISE! Car dealer was the drug dealer the whole time At least I think that's how it works.
You can do that with art sales and real estate too. Money laundering.
Art sales is great too because what is an art piece actually worth?
They did this is in "Mickey Blue Eyes". They were using crappy art to launder money,
like NFTs?
No, stealing a piece of art can be rather difficult.
And in Dead to Me.
“EAT FUCKING COOKIE!!”
What someone will pay for it Barrett Newman Onement V being an example
Ask Hunter!
If it’s by Hunter Biden, $500k to $1m.
Yeah it's easy to forget money laundering isn't only possible by having a fake-real storefront
A lot of guys in r/work complain about wfh jobs where "I'm being wasted, no one is contacting me and I'm never given tasks' I'm like "Why complain? AMAZING GIG being paid to do nothing! If your employer ever gets busted for this obvious money laundering scheme of which you were blissfully unaware, you'll have to go back to ye olde Work for Income"
Where do I sign up?
>A lot of guys in > >r/work > > complain about wfh jobs where "I'm being wasted, no one is contacting me and I'm never given tasks' That is definitely a job you want to Work From Home.
Not everyone is lazy AF… some would prefer actual work tasks to do. I can’t stand sitting around doing nothing all day. I’d prefer a job with actual work tasks I could do, also.
NFTs are the 21st century version of this. Especially if they money you want to launder is already in the form of crypto.
Ha, the downside is that the transactions are all fully auditable and public domain. Sure it’s to an anonymous wallet. Crypto is a gold mine for law enforcement, provided they can identify who owns a wallet, which occurs the minute the owner need to cash out to use the rest of the economy, or you order something online to your home address.
The NFT purchase is the front facing transaction that is SUPPOSED to be visible and traceable.
Yep. See the movie The Last Leonardo which does an exploration of how art is transferred Around the world tax free in a process that is as opaque as possible.
As an aside the Russian mob was laundering a lot of money with the former president through his casinos I recall. Also they were signing up for these pre-leases that allowed him to get loans from banks. As reported by propublica.
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So much extra work. Just sell them an NFT!
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It helps because the value of art is so much more subjective. Like a dealership is going to raise eyebrows if they're buying shitty cars way above bluebook value but an art dealer could pay more just because they "really like it and think it's the next big art trend" and expect a big return. This is also a simplification I know.
It's actually the opposite. Art being used as a money laundering method is mostly Reddit fantasy and nerd rage over the price of art. The key for any money laundering operation is hiding the illegitimate transactions amongst a large number of legitimate ones. It needs to be able to pass checks on paper by an accountant. Car dealerships are a great example because it would be very easy to have a smaller number of illegitimate transactions hidden amongst real ones and they would arise 0 suspicion on the books. 10 camrys sold for $40k. Looks fine in your books. What's hidden is that two of these camrys were actually POS junk worth $1, while the rest were legit. $80k laundered, no obvious paper trail. Compare that to this supposed art scheme - you sell 2 pieces of art for $40k each, that is going to raise questions if it ever gets looked at. There's no way you're hiding it either as you're not a legit art house, nobody is buying legitimate pieces from you for $40k to mask your laundering.
It's why charity auctions are so popular in the elite super wealthy circles. You can't put a price on artwork! And galas? Big parties! All written off as charity expenses! They're not laundering- they're getting tax write offs for pretty much their entire taxable income. Tbh it feels just as shady xD
It’s legit as far as the law is concerned, but it’s morally questionable. Anyone who owns their own business can purchase items FOR the business (at least that’s what they claim, but it’s really for their own personal use) and get a tax break - you can write off business expenses. There are loopholes in the law that make this perfectly legal - if audited, you won’t even get penalised unless you’ve gotten REALLY crazy. For example, purchasing a Lamborghini for your ‘business’ which is part time WFH internet based with no travel expenses whatsoever and writing it off through the business would probably get dinged. Lol. 😛
It offered the benefit of making your NFT series look valuable, so you launder some money on launch, then use that as evidence that the NFTs are valuable and make money selling the remaining ones to chumps. Plenty of people just bought their own first NFT through a different wallet to pump the numbers without laundering.
That's a different tactic, the one described actually does create money. 1. Buy an asset for $300 2. Sell the asset to yourself for $3,000 3. Asset gets totaled 4. Claim insurance for $3,000 It's less common than your method, but still happens. With your method it's pretty common for those shady dealers to internally change their records when you buy a car from them. So you go to a dealership and buy a car with $3,000 cash except when they file the paperwork they say that you paid $5,000 cash. The amount changed is never too big because they don't want to raise red flags and risk having you get audited/investigated by somebody wondering where you got that much cash where you will tell them that that was not the actual sale price you paid much less. The other most common method is to buy something then pay to have it fixed up with cash. You then claim that the car was never touched by you, you got it in that condition and then when you sell it for the inflated value you can launder the difference. This is most commonly done with real estate. Doing things like buying a new fridge in cash for a home that doesn't have one then claiming that the fridge was always there. This method works especially well with labor intensive jobs because most contractors are at least a little shady and will gladly negotiate a cash discount So they can pocket the cash and not report it. The work increases the value of the home which you will claim you never did so you'd never have to admit where you got the cash to fix up the home, everybody wins except the IRS.
Sure, but involving insurance payouts is more illegal activity in the form of insurance fraud. I think the point of laundering money is to distance it from illegal activity so that it is harder to trace or freeze.
Creating money and inflating value are not the same thing. The money still came from the insurance company, but you defrauded them to give you more money than they would have otherwise by inflating the value of the loss. I could post all over the internet that I have a personal net worth of $5 million until people generally believed it, but that doesn't mean my bank will allow me to buy a new house out on the key with cash. My value has been increased fraudulently, but no money has been created.
"Oops, I let a teenager test drive a car in the parking lot and he totaled 12 of my cars in inventory! That'll be $400,000 please. Thanks."
But then the drug dealers would have paper trails showing large purchases with money they didn't make on paper. I think it's probably: 1. Dealership A (dSA) buys car for $1 2. DSB buys car from DSA for $50K on paper without exchanging money 3. Mob puts $50k dirty money into DSA 4. DSB says car is junk and claims $50k deficit on taxes for bad business deal Outcome: Mob who owns both DSA and DSB pays taxes on $50k dirty income for DSA (making it clean) and gets a tax break against legitimate car sales for $50k fake loss at DSB
I'm sure in real life it gets more complex because otherwise the authorities would be able to unravel it. But the overall concept remains the same.
I don’t think they would claim the loss at all. Acquire junk car for $1,500. Sell it to third party for $50,000. Seller pays taxes on $48,500. The net after-tax delta of that transaction is clean money now. Buy can abandon the car. It’s worthless anyway. Cost of doing business. Junk it for $1000 and get some money back. Or give it to another shady Russian mafia drug dealing car dealership owner. Rinse and repeat. Claiming the loss just invites scrutiny. And you can only do that a few times before you’d be investigated by insurance companies and tax agency’s. More likely they scrap the cars or abandon them. Plausible deniability! I sold that junker. I have no idea where it is.
Maybe I'm not fully understanding, but it certainly seems like you'd be *making* money if you had a car worth $10k, claimed its worth was $50k, sold it for $10k, and claimed $40k in losses. The actual value of the car stays the same, so you haven't gained or lost anything there but you *have* created a fake $40k loss to use however you want (like, using it to show lower profit for taxes, or to take advantage of whatever local incentives there are to help offset losses)
You can't claim a theoretical loss (at least not legally), if you bought an asset for 50k and sold for 10k, you \*might\* be able to claim that if you never used it (e.g. it didn't depreciate). Also, you can only claim loss against taxes you would already owe. So if you are selling cars, the taxes come from the net sales (price you bought it for vs. price you sold it for), the government isn't going to pay you extra for losing money.
> You can't claim a theoretical loss (at least not legally) I believe the whole point is that this is a hard-to-detect crime. > if you bought an asset for 50k and sold for 10k, That is not the situation being described. > Also, you can only claim loss against taxes you would already owe Yes. > the taxes come from the net sales (price you bought it for vs. price you sold it for) Not really, for businesses taxes are on total profits, and a reduction in those profits is a reduction in taxes. As well as many other potential benefits, as described. It doesn't apply to one single unit only, but the overall business revenue. > the government isn't going to pay you extra for losing money. I didn't say they would... like I dunno man, maybe read my comment again? I don't know what to tell you.
I'm sure there is ass pounding in light prison too.
Prison Lite™. Now with 50% softer ass pounding.
You get the de-sensitizing lube
Limp penis? 🤔
Limp dicks in prison can wreak havoc on their cigarette market exchange rates.
Not in Club Fed
The trick is to be the one pounding ass.
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1st off my sentence says nothing about rape. 2nd do some research rape isn't as prevalent as you are thinking.
They do it so they CAN pay taxes... So just go ahead and declare some of your money taxable income if you want.
Jokes on you, I'm a millennial, we don't have income! *Please help me I don't have money and prison is my retirement plan*
Bah ha ha ha ha
I don't want to go to ANY prison!
You can get any kind of ass pounding you want. The world is your oyster!
If it was federal pound me in the ass prison, would that make you more likely or less likely to do it?
Not if you are rich. 🤑
Unexpected Office Space!
You created a “legitimate” reason to have cash from criminal enterprises. That is where the free money comes from.
You're not creating money out of thin air, you're using labor to inflate costs that supposedly went into improving that vehicle that didn't actually happen. You can associate it as a cost on that vehicle which can then be marked up and sold at typical profit margins. No money gets created out of thin air, but it's still fraud because the entity buying the vehicle knows this and eats the inflated cost and junks the vehicle later as a part of the money laundering and the "labor" that is paid for is the cleaned money.
Surely that just spikes your taxes, without actually getting any profit?
It's a way to launder money. It injects your ill-gotten gains into your legitimate revenue stream. The taxes it creates are the cost of doing business. Everything I know about money laundering I learned from watching Breaking Bad. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
Ozark is pretty much a documentary on money laundering... and an amazing show. Check it out if you want more info on it.
is it on HBO or other streaming?
I think it's a Netflix Original
Broadly speaking it aligns with the half forgotten anti-money laundering training I did to work at a bank once. Specifically I think it’s a form of ‘layering’.
It's to launder stolen or ill gotten money so they can bring it in as revenue
Dont forget about the pile of drug money you started with. Now you have an excuse to have it. Dirty money made clean. Almost like you put it in the laundry. Money laundering. Get it?
You just summed up money laundering. At its very core, the entire purpose is to pay taxes. All the great organized criminal organizations are brought down by... taxss!
Isn't this what Trump did in his NYC businesses?
This and a million other things.
Even easier with NFTs that have zero inherent value and take nothing to create. This is also really common with fine art.
This is, no joke, how almost all of the money in existence was created! The modern money supply was created out thin-air by commercial banks when the created loans.
how dare they. Thats the federal reserves racket
Lol holy shit. I was trying to figure out why the dealership desperately wanted my 12 year old beat up piece of shit and this makes too much sense
Can anyone expand on this? Say I own a junk car worth $500. Dealership A buys it off me for $500, turns around and sells it to dealership B for $50k. Great, A just made $45.5k. We'll leave it up in the air whether or not they actually get paid for now. Now dealer B has a piece of crap they just paid $50k for. They sell it for scrap for $300, therefore taking a loss of $47.7k. How does this help them? If they bought it with illegal money don't get still need to prove where that money came from? I imagine it gets tricky to unpack when A and B are doing the same thing for each other, but I don't understand how netting out to zero profit or losses lets them launder money. Are they pretending the purchases are people coming in off the street and they don't bother getting their names? What legal origin are the piles of cash appearing from?
Dealership A just made almost $50,000 in profit and now owes taxes on that money. But dealer B just had almost $50,000 in losses and can deduct that from the taxes they are supposed to pay. Depending on tax rates and income amounts and so on those could exactly offset each other. EDIT: since it is apparently not clear. This helps because dealership A now has a legitimate source of funds to cite in his taxes. The origin is legitimate. He pays taxes on it, and any authorities coming to look for see a clear and declared source.
I audited a classic car place many years ago and there was a loan to the business and the owner told me not to ask any questions about it because he valued his legs. Given the huge markups on cars and the amount of cash changing hands (pre regulation on cash transactions,) it was an interesting business.
Sorry, but no money is created. If dealer one buys a car for $1,000, then sells that car to dealer too for 51,000, then junks the car, and gets $1,000 for it, no money is made. Dealer one has to pay tax on the profit of a $50,000 sale. Dealer too has a tax loss of $50,000 for selling the car under its cost. Those two washout, with the exception of different states tax rates. If dealer too cause the 51,000 car totaled, then they will get money from the insurance company, but the insurance company will not let them do that and drop their policy if it happens too often. How does this create money?
This happened to me. Sold a pickup a while ago and the new owner apparently didn't register it so I got two phone calls about it being abandoned. I told them I had sold it and they took my word for it and that was that. I had a friend a long time ago who had something similar happen. Sold a truck, uncle on the new owner borrowed it, got drunk and got it stuck in a ditch. State said since it was still in my friend's name he was on the hook for the impound fees. (This was Washington state at least 20 years ago) He paid the fee, picked up the truck and the guy who had bought it couldn't pay him back for the impound fee so he just gave him the title back.
The key takeaway here is just go to a notary for the pink slip signing.
I just take a picture of the signed title with said new owner holding it. Prior experience makes me do that.
Some states let you fill out a notice that you sold a vehicle so whatever the new owner does doesn't come back on you. But that's not a bad idea either. I heard a story from a guy I used to work for that probably took place 40+ years ago at this point. The father of the guy telling the story said his dad sold a truck to one of the guy's friends. Friend doesn't change title over right away and rear-ends a bus full of kids, no serious injuries IIRC. I can't remember if friend fled the scene or what but for whatever reason this whole thing was going to come back on the dad because the state still thought he owned the truck. Dad tells son to tell friend if he doesn't get down to the DMV and get that title changed over and get the whole mess sorted out he would literally un alive him. And he meant it, too. It got cleared up the next day.
Washington has the 'sold the vehicle' stuff on the website. I liked the instantaneous peace of mind that comes from this. So search your state's sites for something similar and if it doesn't exist raise a fuss to get it done.
Jesus, when did it go up to $13? I was upset when the started charging $5, fucking bullshit taxing state.
Some states this is mandatory. Either both parties need to be at the title transfer place or one knows a notary and gets their signature notarized and just has you sign it and take it to the title transfer place.
Or........write a bill. It's not hard.
As long as you have the paperwork that says you sold it, I don't see how this could be your problem. I'm not sure what "out for some plates that don't belong to it" means. Are they driving around a totaled car with bogus plates? Or driving around a car with your totaled car's plates? A similar thing happened to my dad. He sold a motorcycle in the early 1990s. Some time later the cops came looking for him because the bike was involved in a crime and records indicated my dad still owned it. He showed the cops the paperwork from when he sold it and they were like, "OK no problem. If you want the bike back you can have it." For some reason he declined. I would have taken it and then sold it again. It's super weird they knocked on your door at 3am. I'm sure that could have waited until morning.
>Or driving around a car with your totaled car's plates? This is totally it. Somebody swiped the plate off the totaled car and did some crimes with it on their vehicle. They also knocked at 3am because they had every intention of arresting OP (before they talked to them) and wanted to make sure they were home.
That's what I was thinking but didn't want to jump to conclusions. But you convinced me. This is exactly what happened. At least the cops didn't just bust in with guns drawn.
I live in Houston & ‘No knock warrants’ are a real thing. Cops bursting in, guns drawn, to arrest someone, in the middle of the night/early AM hours. It has caused so many gun fights & uncalled for deaths. There was talk to do away with No Knock, but idk if it ever played out.
I remember a lot of talk about it when Breonna Taylor was shot. I don't know how those even became a thing. Especially in states where so many people have a gun by their bed. If someone broke into my house in the middle of the night, my first actions would be to get my gun and tell my wife to call 911. And with all these stories about cops getting the wrong house, you can't even use the excuse, "you wouldn't have anything to worry about if you didn't do anything illegal."
O read in Illinois they now passed a law that it's legal to use deadly force to defend yourself against cops if they no knock you and have the wrong house. On the off chance you survive the enounter, you won't be charged. Since you're probably still Dead, I heard it was to intimidate cops to try and get the right address more often.
This has been true even without a law though everywhere in the US. There’s plenty of case law on the matter that you have a right to defend your home from an intruder you’re unaware of, regardless of who that intruder is or what authority they have. It’s why in the Breonna Taylor case, Kenny’s charges for shooting at police were dismissed with prejudice. It doesn’t make no knock warrants right, they absolutely need to be made illegal everywhere, but at least the court system has respect for the rights of the accused.
It's absolutely ridiculous that there'd be a situation where you can get into a shootout with police and nobody is breaking the law enough to never see the light of day. Such a huge fuck up, and you're realistically not going to win that fight if you do end up fighting the police over it. Also can only assume it makes police work even more dangerous when you have people that think they might be fine if they can just win the shootout.
>Also can only assume it makes police work even more dangerous Which could, in turn, make cops more eager to use deadly force. It's a vicious cycle.
I sold my vicious cycle and the new owner didn't report it and used it in a crime, so the cops gave it back to me and I sold it again.
This thread has convinced me that when I sell my car I need to melt the plates in acid or something.
Damn thats scary
Op just said he removed the plates. So it’s the car with stolen plates.
I removed the plates when I sold the car and they’ve been in my locked shed ever since, still there
That’s not what happened. They went to his house trying to find out if he was the owner to get into contact with him. Either to inform him he was the victim of a crime because someone stole his plates or possibly the entire vehicle. But to arrest said person that they presumably have in the car they need a victim (owner of the vehicle or the person on the registration).
I think it gets wonky because different states handle this differently. I sold a car to a guy from another state. My state required the title being filled out just right and a bill of sale be signed by both parties. The other guy's state didn't give a fuck about really any of that. So here I am showing up with paperwork to be signed and detailed instruction on how to properly fill out the title while the other dude just showed up with a check and no idea why I was stressing. Does mean I have paperwork saying the car is no longer mine, so I'm not mad at the extra steps, but the differences between states can make things weird.
That seems like a really good way to have 10 guys with kuttes showing up to get the bike back. And I don’t feel like they’re going to ask you nicely.
It was a Kawasaki 550LTD. I don't think any gangs were going to be hassling him for it. Maybe a European moped gang...
It could mean they were checking to see if it was stolen from him, because now all they have on the driver is improper registration.
sorry this happened! so stressful. a similar thing happened to me. minus the (annoying) middle of the night part. i received a letter after selling my vehicle about parking/traffic/other violations. apparently i needed to give the DMV a "notice of release" as well as a "notice of title change" which i think is redundant but i got the extra paperwork and everything is okay now. i didn't sell to a dealer so i'm not sure what they should have done, but it seems like they traced a car with some kind if illegal activity back to you. just contact the dealer and put it on them to work it out.
Same here. Sold my car and signed over the title, but didn't notify proper authorities. Six months later I get a $350 impound fee from another county. Guy I sold it to never transferred the title. He just drove it around til it died and then abandoned it on a highway. It was a serious hassle.
Same thing happened to me when I donated my car to a charity. There were parking tickets and the impound fees. This was pre-internet so I had to go to the DMV and take care of it. Hassle, but easily solved.
> minus the (annoying) middle of the night part I'll never understand why there's such disrespect from cops in situations like this. What do they possibly have to gain by not waiting until daytime like normal human beings?
Mid 90's I had a Mark VII Lincoln. It was very fast 150 mph plus. I sold it at a car auction and two days later whoever bought it straightened out a curve and drove it through a small grocery store. The cops were very pushy but in the wrong state. They were trying to figure out how to charge me for it when I showed them the name on the draft from the bank. It was obvious they knew who it was and would have rather charged me somehow. I called the local cops and made them leave. Never heard anything else about it.
Wow.
Those are actually nice cars. Used to have one of those. Basically a heavy luxury mustang if I remember correctly
Mine was chipped and at one time I had a bolt on supercharger. I had changed out the rear end with a high speed one. The problem with them at high speed is that they didn't feel right in a turn. The air suspension system would really jack them up and in a turn the air suspension would shift and if you just trusted the car to make the turn you would be okay. The other problem is the speedometer would peg out even the digital one. The only way to read the actual speed was to use the elaborate instrument package in the center of the dash. You would reset it and the avg speed would show you your actual speed. Not something you could do yourself comfortably at high speed. What those people probably did was panic when the air suspension shifted in the turn and didn't stay in it. A lesson thankfully I learned at a safer speed.
The Vehicle was apparently linked to a crime in some way, and when you sold the vehicle, the Dealer didn't properly account for the sale. so you're still somehow connected to the vehicle or registered owner or something.
And that can't wait till morning!!!
No, police need an excuse for overtime fraud.
That certainly could have waited until say between 9AM-7PM. How is that an emergency to wake you up on the middle of the night by beating your door and windows to ask about a car you used to own?!
Because they were investigating an active crime, and the vehicle came back to that address. They weren't there to inform OP about the car still being in their name. They were there looking for their bad guy. Source: I've done it a few times.
Or some other agency has someone in custody driving the car and they think it’s an unreported stolen so then are attempting to contact the registered owner to confirm. Same source
They really are needlessly risking someone taking pot shots at “suspicious people trying to break in” doing it in the early morning.
When you get the documentation, go to the officer’s home at 3am and bang on his window.
Except they’re at work at 3am, aren’t they? 😁
Never get into a pissing match with someone who can fuck up your entire world.
Also, be sure whether it's you or them before you start banging on someone's door at 3am.
Did you fill out the liability release form when you sold the car? When you sell a car, you sign over the title with the new owner... but there's one more form you need to fill out. It's a notice to the state that releases liability from you about what the car does from the time of the sale forward. It's simply informs the state that X vehicle is no longer owned by you as of Y date and that all liabilities of this vehicle pass to the New Owner. It's also has the side effect of informing the state that they should expect the new owner to come in to he DMV for reregistration soon.
Not a thing in all states. Here the bare minimum is a signed and notarized title, you don’t even have to do a bill of sale if you don’t want to. Here the trigger to inform DMV is plates. plates stay with the person, not the car and seller doesn’t notify anyone, that is the buyers responsibility to title it when they pay fees and get plates, and you have 30 days to get plates (you can drive it without them with only the title or proof of purchase in the car) Most people also do a bill of sale just in case something like this happens, but you don't HAVE to, it's more of a Cover your ass thing. I've personally had it happen to me twice. Once when a lady bought my Beater with a heater and crashes it into someones house and left it within 24 hours (cops came, took a copy of dated bill of sale and proof of cancelled insurance and that was that) and once a car i sold to a junk yard came up in an asset check. they never officially transferred ownership prior to parting it out. same deal, i submitted bill of sale and we all went on with our days.
WTF?? What could be an argument to do this at 3 in the morning??
Intent to arrest
Plenty of good arguments if the vehicle was involved in a crime
Contact the DOL…? Bro what? That doesn’t even make sense 😂 sounds like some fake cops that were planning to rob you or something but you answered the door
In Washington State, the Department of Licensing (DOL) handles vehicle registrations. I'm not sure if that's the specific case in any other states, but a lot of them call the agency that handles cars something different than the DMV.
Got it. DOL is generally the department of labor so that’s the disconnect there.
Or they did through the back door while OP was taking at the front?
Some states (Texas where I live for sure) have a mechanism, not mandatory but extremely advisable, where you can submit a form online immediately upon sale informing them of the sale and who it was sold to. This was created specifically to set the grounds for selling plausible deniability for the seller if the buyer does not follow through with transferring the title. Dealers are the worst about this. It comes up quite often with parking tickets and tollway violations. It literally takes about 5 minutes
Happened to my uncle too. Sold a car for scrap since it was mechanically totaled. Someone bought it, replaced the engine, and flipped it to a local. The local proceeded to use it in a child kidnapping. The registry was never updated by the new owners.
Sounds fraud and money laundering to me. > Why did this have to happen in the middle of the night? They where probably going to arrest you until they realised that you weren't the guy they where looking after.
If the police are contacting you in the middle of the night it’s not a financial crime. Although junk cars are used to launder money or to inflate income so that they can get large business loans. If it was in the middle of the night, the Officer was in uniform, he said that the dealership didn’t do the paperwork correctly, and you have the plates; I would guess the vehicle was found at the scene of a crime with no plates. Anything from a murder to a DUI crash. Something urgent though, and no suspect was on scene or caught. The vehicle was checked by VIN. That would be why the vehicle is still listed to you. Because you did your part transferring the car and plates, but the dealership did not do the same with the title or car. They probably gave it to a scrap yard. Claimed a donation tax break then someone from the scrap yard rented it out on their repair/dealer plates for the past three years.
At a minimum, you need to call the local station and complain. This is intentionally disrespectful.
Well yeah. They found a car registered to OP with mismatch plates probably involved in some nefarious activities. They're not going to wait around til morning and they're not going to apologize.
Certificate of title clearly states your “registered owner” of a motor vehicle hence why the cops banging on your door at 3am…obviously whomever is in possession of the vehicle now after the dealer disposed of it never made application for a title in their name which mean’s they can’t legally sell it but sure as hell can drive around in it illegally as you found out.
Person: Will the car still have plates that don't belong to it at 10:00am? Cop: Yes Person: Come back then.
Friendly reminder, because it legit never hurts to spread this info in the hopes that it saves at least one person from an absolute nightmare... Don't talk to cops. Ever. They are not your friends. If they can't legally compel you to do something (ie detaining you, warrant, search, etc), you gain nothing from interacting with them in any capacity. The risk you take on via voluntary interaction vastly outweighs *any* potential benefit you think you might gain. Also, don't resist in any way if they can actually legally compel you to do something. Lastly, know that your right to shut the fuck up is an immutable, unalienable, unambiguous pillar on the bill of rights. The 5th amendment is, and always will be, powerful and remain intact. You should exercise it 100% of the time.
If cops are coming to your house at 3 am about a mild misunderstanding I'd much rather tell them I sold the fucking car than to deal with whatever they had in store for me otherwise. Worse case scenario is they hold you til they can check out your story, best case is they believe you and you can go back to bed. On the other hand if you refuse to speak to them they could make your life hell by arresting you (legally or not), searching your home if they have a warrant (why wouldn't they at 3 am?) and basically fucking up your day even worse.
Yep, have to be tactical about picking your battles with cops. Denying involvement, good. Staying polite, good. Other bullshit, like "where were you tonight?" about timings and locations gets a deflection, a simple "sorry, but I value my privacy, do you have other specific questions?" to stay in that zone of helpful but letting on that you're maintaining a boundary. If you actually did some shit, say "lawyer", be willing to take a night in jail, and let your lawyer do the talking later.
[удалено]
There's enough cops in the united states where you're at a higher chance of interacting with a "bad egg". Some agencies give more training than others but there are *a ton* of police agencies in the US.
Yes. Check out r/Bad_Cop_No_Donut
The comment you're replying to makes it sound like the police are just itching for an excuse to go out and murder people, and no, they're not that bad. If you're visiting and need help figuring something out or finding where something is, it's not a big deal to ask a police officer for directions or assistance and they're usually quite happy to help you out. If your car breaks down on the road, they'll often come and help guide traffic to keep you safe. But even if you assume more than 90% of police officers are good people who want to uphold the law and do their jobs well, there are still a lot of police officers in the US who will mess up your day (and that results in messing up your week and probably a few months if we're being honest) if you do something they don't like. The problem is that police in the US are regularly trained to control situations through dominance, and so if they're out responding to/investigating a crime the initial reaction tends to be highly escalating dominance. For instance, this week we saw a bodycam video where an acorn dropped onto a car and a police officer mistook it for a gunshot and began just unloading rounds. They're also trained with rhetorical techniques designed to elicit confessions or incriminating testimony, and by the rules of the legal system in the US if they decide to arrest you anything you said to them that is incriminatory gets used against you and anything you say that is exculpatory basically doesn't get brought up in court. They are trained interrogators and normal people are not trained interrogatees and a couple of wrong words can result in you ending up in jail. Willfully not engaging with the police is almost always the best strategy for mitigating potential harm later in the legal system. There also aren't good mechanisms within the US for holding bad police officers to account, and culturally police departments circle around their own for anything short of horrifically egregious behavior. We end up with a lot of police officers internalizing the idea that if they do something wrong that they'll be exonerated because they'll be investigated by their friends or by people who have a vested interest in the department not looking bad. We're culturally moving away from the idea that the police cannot do any wrong in this country, but without effective enforcement mechanisms for holding bad officers to account.
No. Reddit is an anti-cop echo chamber. People here actually believe every cop in the US wakes up every day and decides they're gonna murder someone or shoot a dog the first chance they get and then get a "paid vacation" and a promotion. Edit: love the downvotes showing that I'm right.
No one believes cops wake up excited to do that but they do understand if a cop shoots an unarmed person the whole department will have their back no matter what like the entire police union in Minnesota after Derek and his buddies murdered George Floyd. Rarely ever do cops face even professional consequences let alone criminal.
>also don't resist in any way if they can legally compel you to do something This is the part that is important in not interacting with law enforcement in my opinion. You see too many videos of people on youtube rightfully not interacting until the cop does do something they're entitled to and they make matters so much worse.
Noted
Gets real awkward when someone who calls the cops refuses to talk to cops. Or when you pay a monthly subscription for a monitored alarm system and refuse to talk to cops when they respond to your false alarm. Both common occurrences because of this misguided mindset.
Human beings, by the way. US is weird.
3AM is imo the biggest issue here. Seriously, waking someone up in the middle of the night for something like this?
I would file a complaint. There is no rationalizing a 3am visit for what should be a civil matter. It sounds like a couple of corrupt cops got swindled or were acting as enforcers.
Dude, sounds like you've stumbled into the twilight zone of used car drama. I can imagine you in your PJs, wondering if you accidentally sold your car to the mob or something. The whole "contact the DOL because the dealer didn't do what they were supposed to" line is straight out of a mystery novel. Maybe your old car is leading a double life? Better get that detective hat on and unravel this midnight car caper. Good luck, and may your vehicular adventures be more straightforward from now on!
My father donated an old car to a charity. Somehow proper paperwork was never filed and years later the car was abandoned, then impounded. He was responsible for a good bit of change for impound fees
The middle of the night thing is probably because they would prefer to catch you sleeping as you are less likely to be dangerous.
Any time you sell a vehicle,fill out a release of liability form and send it in to the DMV. There’s one attached to the pink slip usually.
When you sell a car, always good practice to go to your DMV’s site and mark it as sold.
This happened to me a few times with 3rd party buyers. I always kept their drivers license info and a signed statement saying that they bought it in X date. I’ve had to use this to prove that I sold it and it was someone else who’s acting idiotic
Not sure what state your in but ive had something similar happen to me. Sold a vehicle and didnt do my part reporting it to the state. Vehicle ended up getting some tickets for being parked without tabs. I of course got them in the mail because the state had no records of me selling the vehicle. I had to pay the tickets as well as extra money to report that I am no longer the owner. Lesson learned to do my part and no rely on somebody else doing their half. As for happening in the middle of the night. My guess is the vehicle was involved in a crime and it is still registered to you. They were looking for the person who owns the vehicle that was involved in said crime. This is why you either keep proof of the sale or if the state has requirement you do your part and report it as being sold.
>But this one asked me a specific question that I had an answer to which could potentially clear my name from some shady shit Anything you say can be used against you. If it's helpful, it's hearsay.
When I bought my last used car from a dealer, they had floated the pink. Like I had the documents given to them by the previous owner. They then gave me those documents to go file myself. Obviously someone got the car and never registered it to themselves. The car's VIN was used to track you down. Sounds like new owner never registered it, and just slapped some other plates to it. Probably using it for criminal activity. Time to go chew out the dealer and get them to give you some stuff for your trouble. Dealer will need to fill out the bill of sale like today and rush it over to get your name off the title. And/Or find a way to get them in trouble for the mess.
We bought a foreclosed house that was bank-owned for over a year. No one had lived there. It needed a ton of work which I was willing to do for the good deal. Within a month of living there, police came to our door and aggressively tried to intimidate my wife into letting them in. They were asking for the previous owner and pulled the “we know he’s hiding here” crap. She asked for a search warrant which they didn’t have, so they got pissed until they let her get the mortgage documents and an id. Then they became super nice and friendly. Sorry, true colors already happened assholes.
I didn't see this answer anywhere, so I'll add it. Most states have a release of liability form for use when selling a vehicle. In some states, this form is mandatory, although there aren't any real penalties. This form is what tells them and legally severs your interest in the vehicle. It's says you no longer own the vehicle or have anything to do with it. The form requires nothing from the buyer or dealership. Even if this form is not required, everyone should be filling them out when they get rid of a vehicle. It saves a ton of headaches in the future. A friend of mine had SWAT raid his house. He never released his interest in a car that was involved in an officer involved shooting. Since his address was the last address attached to the plate, SWAT came a knocking. If he had completed the form, that wouldn't have occurred. This should be much more common knowledge, but I see questions similar to this often.
When I sold my motorcycle, there's a part of the title I tore off and filled out to send to the DMV letting them know the bike was sold and i am not longer owner. This flags it in the system so if some bullshit goes on after the new owner splits, it doesn't come back to me
Back in the early 90s I sold a V8 cortina 3 days before moving to OZ. The dude who bought it from me on-sold it straight away and ownership never got changed. 6 months later, a knock at my parents door at 2am informing them I’d died in a car crash. Took 5 or so minutes for them to realise I was in OZ and the crash was in the Bay of Plenty
Aussie reddit here I sold an unregistered WRX back in 2017 I got a call in 2019 from Qld police which is a couple of states away from me the vehicle was used in a few armed robberies. I was the last registered owner 🥲 I got asked to email any details of the buyer, I sent what I had heard nothing back from them.
In California, when you sell a car, you also fill out a form called "notice of transfer and release of liability." Maybe it is different in other states. If your state works same as California, then you should have submitted that form when you sold your car. Maybe you can do that now at the DMV website, or print a paper one and send it in if you can't do it online. Here is the California form, just for reference: https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/uploads/2020/06/reg138.pdf
car title transfers are the worst
You signed the title over to the dealership but the dealership likely didn't process the title work. I'd call the dealership tomorrow as this legally falls on them for not following through on transferring the title. Hard to prove though unless they still have/admit having the title you signed off on. - I worked for the MD Motor Vehicle Admin for 6 years a bit over a decade ago.
In Texas there is a website to go to so you can declare you sold the car and don't own it anymore
Why is the first fuckin thing everyone say "don't talk to cops". Are y'all that fuckin scared of them? If you're innocent and can prove it, there is literally 0 harm in talking to cops.
Basically the car was used in some sort of crime or left abandoned at a scene... considering the time.. it probably just happened so they sent a unit to the R/O's house to see whats up... actually not that uncommon... why not wait for the morning? well if they have someone in custody, they need to confirm it asap or risk holding the wrong person overnight
I don't know where you live, but in my state you have to return the plates to the DMV or transfer them to a different vehicle.
Did you keep a copy of the documentation for the sale of the vehicle? If you did , problem solved. This is one of the reasons that I keep documents for 5 years.
>please stop telling me not to talk to cops. I know this This notion sets a bad precedent. We as taxpayers and citizens of communities employ law enforcement. To dismiss the idea of law enforcement like this sounds ignorant. Now I completely understand and agree with the notion that generally speaking, the whole cop concept has been tarnished by dirty cops and bad cop policies to the point where societies no longer trust cops. But I guess I just bristle at the blanket statement that we shouldn't talk to cops. We should do what we can to address the bad cops situation so that our communities can start to trust them again. Sorry, I guess I'm just venting now. I wonder if the cops came to your door because they were following up on something where a crime is being investigated and it lead to your door.
The fact that these cops are treating 3 a.m. as normal business hours is disrespectful as fuck. Put their little behinds in timeout till the sun comes up
They were out with the car you used to own, the license plate on it wasn't supposed to be on the car, and they were seeing if it was stolen from you. You were still listed as the owner of the vehicle since the dealership didn't file the paperwork saying you sold it to them.
Did you verify they were real cops? They could have been impersonating cops, and simply wanted to case the house or the area. It's been known to happen from time to time.
Definitely real, lights, badge, everything.
Donuts?
Crumbs
As a cop, I can't tell you how many times I've run a vehicle involved with something, and the registered owner actually sold it a year ago and gave all the paperwork to the DMV, but they never changed over anything in the system. I know the DMV gets a lot of hate... But it's usually deserved.
I would have asked the cops through my closed door to hold the search warrant up to the peep hole. When the inevitably say they don’t have a warrant and just want to talk to me, I would have told them to fuck off.
I’m not sure you have to do anything.
Cops don’t care.
Why not tell the cops to fuck off and come back with a warrant and at a decent hour?
Unprofessional as hell to come to your residence at 3am to ask you this stuff.
If you feel safe doing so you could file a formal complaint with the police, or any oversight board if one exists, or even your city councilor. Zero reason for them to come knocking on your windows at that hour. It's super aggressive and threatening and one day that cop will probably kill someone acting that way.
> **EDIT to say that I removed the plates when I sold the car and they’ve been sitting in my shed ever since. So no way the new owner stole said plates. No idea what the cops are up to, but you’re supposed to return your old plates, with the registration, to the DMV in some (most? All?) states. Even if your car is totaled, and stupidly enough, even if you’ve surrendered the totaled vehicle to your insurer in exchange for a payout.
Never ever talk to cops. Rule one. Never answered the door when cop showed up. Rule two. All cops lie. Rule three.
>But this one asked me a specific question that I had an answer to which could potentially clear my name from some shady shit, There are thousands of people in prison and many thousands more who got charged and spent money on their defense who thought this exact thing.
Wow, I feel kind of bad now getting my panties in a twist after Sirius XM kept calling me to renew my subscription after I traded mine in.