Protip: trailer theft

What a night I had...

Let us assume that your car has been legitimately stolen, lightly damaged by the thieves, and said thieves have been arrested.

Let us further assume that your friendly Detective has called you and asked you to come claim your car. Additionally you also happen to be on parole for a theft offense.

In your excitement to come claim your car DO NOT STEAL A TRAILER and show up with your freshly stolen trailer expecting to claim your car.

I feel like I shouldn't have to say this, but there you go.

EDIT: unobfuscated

Did you do the car stealing, or the trailer stealing? Have you called your lawyer yet?

Wait? This "person" did not steal a trailer, and shows up with a stolen trailer. Huh?

Yup... I called him to pick up his car, he stole a trailer, and then showed up with said stolen trailer to retrieve his car. It took me a while to wrap my head around the concept and I was there.

I shouldn't be shocked anymore, but sometimes I still can't believe the things that people do. And I still have a metric E36 M3 ton of paperwork to do.

Ah, so you are the "friendly detective". Got it.

The audacity of people is amazing.

i once got a call to come pick up a car i sold almost a year before from a police impound lot.. the title never got transferred, so it was still my car as far as the police were concerned and it was going to cost me $135 to get it back- which is a good price for a 92 Caprice 9C1. the guy that i sold it to had sold it to a co-worker that was an illegal immigrant that got pulled over for DWI.

so i get one of my friends to ride with me to get the car. the police drug sniffing dog was in the reception area, and showed a particular interest in my friend- which was probably because he had a bit of a brain fart and brought his one hitter with him in his pocket into a police station..

the cops didn't do anything about it- and probably got a good laugh out of it- but my friend was crapping bricks when he realized what was going on and you could tell that he was in full on "panic because you are in a police station and have pot in your pocket and the dog is onto you, but don't look like you are panicking because you are in a police station and the dog is onto you" mode. and he had the audacity to get mad at me for taking him to a police station with pot in his pocket, when he knew full well where we were going when i picked him at his house up to go get the car.

In reply to novaderrik:

Sounds like what would happen if I took any of my ex-co-workers from the call center with me to the police station.

Working on a Marine base a couple of years back. Working on the base included serious background checks, but this was different. High security, we were working in the armaments area. Frisk searches and metal detectors both entering and leaving, dogs, etc. etc. etc.

2 guys get arrested by the MP's for possession of cocaine.

I guess they thought it would be OK to have it along, just in case they needed a hit or 2.

In reply to SVreX:

They were just trying to be prepared :p

Then again, what they were preparing for and what they experienced were two very different things.

In reply to novaderrik:

My first thought was this... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gixCpK80c_k

just proves they are making better idiots all the time

When I was a teenager, one of my friends had to go to court for a possession charge. The appearance was a formality. We all knew he'd get a small fine and 3 months probation. After he was found guilty, but before sentencing there was a break. What they do in that case, is hold you in custody until the break is over. The first thing they do when you go into custody is a search. They found an ounce of weed down his pants.

The judge was NOT impressed.

Sadly, I have found the pot heads are the ones who really do not think things like that through....

Which brings us to: Which came first, the pot or the bad judgment?

It was certainly a lapse in judgement, but the timing was perfect. You could probably go to court 100 times and not see a break occur like that again.

Zomby woof wrote: It was certainly a lapse in judgement, but the timing was perfect. You could probably go to court 100 times and not see a break occur like that again.

jus karma

My step son got picked up for issueing a bad check. At the hearing, I was there to bail him out, he offered to pay the fine with a check.

In reply to novaderrik:

(This is not meant to be accusatory or me getting on my high horse, I'm truly confused and just looking for clarification). How is this not theft? You sold the car to one guy, who sold it to another. I'm assuming everyone had receipts. Just because the DMV/police think it's your car, it's not. Isn't it theft to pay the impound fee and then take the car? What am I missing? Is the title considered proof of ownership even though someone else has a receipt showing they bought the car from you? I'm confused.

Was the illegal immigrant getting deported so the car would have been sent to auction after sitting in the impound lot for months? I don't blame you for circumventing the auction process, I just would be worried about the legalities of it.

Bob

In reply to Schmidlap:

Because title transfer never happened, he never legally "sold" the car. That is 100% on the buyer(s), not the seller. When a car's ownership is questioned, the name on the title is the victor, period the end.

I had the exact same thing happen to me, except the car in question was my cursed 92 SHO, and it was in impound with something like $1100 worth of fees from being abandoned. The difference was I had sold it to a dealership (trade-in) and was able to stick it to the dealer to pay the fines (and then some for title fraud). You couldn't have PAID me to take that car back!

I still remember that when I was a kid my dad got a 2 am phone call about a car he had sold but that had never been switched in paperwork. it was a 72 Dodge Polara coupe with the factory police package suspension and a 440 with some aftermarket drag racing heads. Yeah, it was his DD. Ahh, the days of cheap gas....

Aparantly, it had been used in a bank robbery as the get away car and was abandoned in the middle of the freeway after they outran the cops. The cops were calling to track down the listed owner.

He showed the local PD the signed bill of sale the next day to prove it wasn't him I think. That and the fact it happened 2 states away kept him out of trouble.

There was an article recently here in Ontario that a guy who hit someone with his dump truck (fatality) showed up to an arranged surrender at the police station to be charged.

He was found to have illegal drugs in his possession.

Javelin wrote: In reply to Schmidlap: Because title transfer never happened, he never legally "sold" the car. That is 100% on the buyer(s), not the seller. When a car's ownership is questioned, the name on the title is the victor, period the end. I

You sir are correct. I run across this every day with individuals that do not want to have any assets in their name so they never change the title.

ultraclyde wrote: I still remember that when I was a kid my dad got a 2 am phone call about a car he had sold but that had never been switched in paperwork. it was a 72 Dodge Polara coupe with the factory police package suspension and a 440 with some aftermarket drag racing heads. Yeah, it was his DD. Ahh, the days of cheap gas.... Aparantly, it had been used in a bank robbery as the get away car and was abandoned in the middle of the freeway after they outran the cops. The cops were calling to track down the listed owner. He showed the local PD the signed bill of sale the next day to prove it wasn't him I think. That and the fact it happened 2 states away kept him out of trouble.

Same thing happened to my dad when I was a kid too, except it was a Ford wagon, and an armed robbery.

Ojala wrote:

Javelin wrote: In reply to Schmidlap: Because title transfer never happened, he never legally "sold" the car. That is 100% on the buyer(s), not the seller. When a car's ownership is questioned, the name on the title is the victor, period the end. I

You sir are correct. I run across this every day with individuals that do not want to have any assets in their name so they never change the title.

How do they get it registered? Do they just steal a plate?

friedgreencorrado wrote:

Ojala wrote:

Javelin wrote: In reply to Schmidlap: Because title transfer never happened, he never legally "sold" the car. That is 100% on the buyer(s), not the seller. When a car's ownership is questioned, the name on the title is the victor, period the end. I

You sir are correct. I run across this every day with individuals that do not want to have any assets in their name so they never change the title.

How do they get it registered? Do they just steal a plate?

in MN, anyone can buy tabs for any car.. you just need the VIN and they are willing to take your money without asking who you are. it's a very simple process..

i asked many questions about the legality of me getting a car back from a police impound lot that i had sold. they said that it showed up as being mine when they ran the VIN, so as far as they were concerned it was mine to get. so i got it back. when i was digging thru the stuff in the car- those Mexicans have a lot of weird stuff- i found the title in the glove box with my signature and all the info of the friend i sold the car to- when i asked him about the car the next time i saw him a few weeks later, he claimed he lost the title before transferring it and claimed that he sold it to the other guy to be scrapped.. yeah, sure, whatever.. i wasn't mad- i sold him the car (which i had paid $2500 for a couple of years earlier) for $2k and a set of really nice steel 70's Z/28 wheels with almost new Firestone Indy tires, a Grant steering wheel, some aluminum small block valve covers, and a few other odds and ends and then got the car back for about $175 once my gas to go get it was added in...

after i got the car back, i let it sit around for a while before parting it out. this happened back in '03, and the engine is still alive and getting close to 20mpg in my cousin's 4X4 95 Suburban if he drives it nice..