Comment by thenewwazoo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by thenewwazoo | Hacker News Reader

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So I think it goes like this:

* D&L Auto Body & Towing tows a car, incurring tow and storage fees

* vehicle owner doesn't (or can't) recover the car, and D&L Auto Body & Towing may now request permission from Dominik Stefanski to sell the car to recoup costs if the car is worth less than $1500. state law says money from the sale above the towing and storage fees goes back to the (now-former) owner

* Dominik Stefanski lets D&L Auto Body & Towing cut the line (saving time, and time is money) and grants permission to sell the car, in exchange for letting him preferentially purchase the car for under $1500

* D&L Auto Body & Towing misrepresents the car's condition in DMV paperwork to justify (to Stefanski!) the low valuation, which enables the sale. Dominik Stefanski purchases the car for less than $1500, but presumably more than D&L Auto Body & Towing's actual costs. the (former) vehicle owner gets cheated

* Dominik Stefanski then restores the car to its condition when towed, and sells it for a tidy profit

Right, so it Feels like the employees of the Tow shop can make a lot more money by selling it to themselves (or family members, or however it can be laundered), but instead they traded that opportunity (scam) cost for a shorter DMV lineup. Doesn't seem sensible (as far as highly illegal scams go).

The DMV employee had to sign off on the condition before a sale and I think that's the catch. If the tow employee lied and tried sell it to their family/friend then they could have been caught/fined by the DMV.

The scam works because the two company can quickly collect money from the DMV employee (no need to store the car on the lot for an extended period of time) and I'd guess with a premium they both agree on for all the hardships of the towing.

But why would a different DMV employee not sign off on the sale when they already go to the trouble to remove the wheels and doors and misrepresent cars as missing them?

For starters, it'd start to get suspicious if this was the 20th car that was missing doors and wheels this month. Someone in on the scam won't even make you take the doors off, they'll just happily file away that's what happened.

The tow company apparently has to submit pictures of the vehicle.

The employees need the DMV, and also may not have the capital themselves

Not have less than $1500? The shell company could have employed them or purchased parts from them, or they could also be doing the same with their own shells and therefore often need to get to the head of a specific line and the DMV investigation probably wouldn't say much more than it has said, unless that was solid evidence of collusion by a DMV employee.

It says right there in the article, the DMV employee would go and pick the cars he wanted every so often. Which implies there were more cars that were under appraised and sold to other people, the DMV employee just picked some for himself every so often.

This payment was for looking the other way when the towing company would obviously try to under appraise a car.

Now I wonder how long that line possibly could be, to justify losing hundreds of dollars simply not to sit in it.

I don't think the D&L is losing anything in that arrangement. They're only ever entitled to the towing and storage fees. Any excess above the towing and storage fees goes to the owner.

Fairly pricing the car may make it take longer to sell.

Assuming that towing is much more profitable than storage and that their business is mostly storage limited (e.g. they could tow more but their lot quickly fills)-- then anything that helps them quickly turn over cars-- including fast sales and line skipping-- can make them a lot more money.

The only way selling hurts them is if they're so towing limited that quickly selling cars will leave their lot empty when they could have otherwise been earning storage fees. And even then, a car with storage fees in-excess of its value will never get picked up nor sell for more than those fees and could easily turn into a loss for them.

Given that crooks like these can probably just go around and tow random cars should their lot ever be too empty, I'm going to guess that not having enough to maximize their storage income was never their problem.

Have you been to the DMV?

I’d be shocked if Stefanski weren’t kicking back some profits to D&L Auto.

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