How a Connecticut DMV Employee Made Thousands by Selling Towed Cars(www.propublica.org)

88 pointsby hn_acker2 days ago4 comments

ForOldHack2 days ago
Just Connecticut? You are looking at almost every single city in America doing what American cities do best: Denying the property rights without due process, and profiting from it.
- sidewndr465 minutes ago
  The fun thing about words like "property rights" is it has become a form of doublespeak. When someone brings it up in modern usage, they are almost always talking about how an individual, group, or entity can somehow exert control over property they don't own.
pj_mukh2 days ago
"According to the DMV case report, whenever D&L employees went to the DMV office, they would make eye contact with Stefanski, who would then allow them to cut the habitually long, slow-moving lines. In exchange for this favor, the report said, Stefanski would spend his days off walking the company’s lot selecting vehicles that had belonged to other people only weeks or months prior. D&L would then undervalue the cars on DMV forms, investigators said, allowing Stefanski to buy them cheaply and resell them for a profit."
What? They're giving away cars just to cut in line? That seems a pointlessly costly deal. Maybe I'm not understanding the scam correctly.
- thenewwazoo2 days ago
  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
  - pj_mukh2 days ago
    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).
    cogman102 days ago
    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.
    stefan_2 days ago
    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?
    cogman102 days ago
    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.
    ycombinatrix18 hours ago
    The tow company apparently has to submit pictures of the vehicle.
    darth_avocado2 days ago
    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.
    yieldcrv2 days ago
    The employees need the DMV, and also may not have the capital themselves
    snailmailstare2 days ago
    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.
  - JumpCrisscross2 days ago
    I’d be shocked if Stefanski weren’t kicking back some profits to D&L Auto.
  - 2 days ago
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  - thrance2 days ago
    Now I wonder how long that line possibly could be, to justify losing hundreds of dollars simply not to sit in it.
    nullc2 days ago
    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.
    dullcrisp2 days ago
    Have you been to the DMV?
- vonmoltke2 days ago
  > What? They're giving away cars just to cut in line? That seems a pointlessly costly deal. Maybe I'm not understanding the scam correctly.
  You're not. As the article notes
  > Under state law, the profits from sales of towed cars are supposed to belong to the vehicle owners. Towing companies have to hold onto the proceeds for a year and turn over any remaining money, after subtracting their fees, to the state.
  This means D&L doesn't give a shit how much they sell the cars for as long as they get more than the towing and storage fees for them. Depending on how many cars they deal with, it might actually be more profitable to turn them over quickly for pennies on the dollar than let them sit in the yard and rack up higher fees.
- djeastm2 days ago
  The towing company isn't getting the profits from the sale of the cars. The law has the money going to the state if the owner doesn't claim it within a certain amount of time. So their incentive is just the favor and clearing out vehicles that don't benefit them quickly (and possibly a small kickback from the seller to the towing manager, but that's just my speculation)
  Pretty sad that after all that investigation no one seems to be held accountable, but I suppose that's life these days.
  - jfengel2 days ago
    I assume they at least get their "storage costs" back. Which is plenty profitable.
- citizenpaul2 days ago
  The Stefanski guy is obviously cutting the DMV employee in on the scam but the paper can't print that unless they can prove it or they can be sued for libel.
  We live in America where you can criminally enrich yourself but if a third party points out it is happening they go to jail instead.
- datadrivenangel2 days ago
  Preferential treatment may be quite valuable, but this definitely seems a bit overkill.
- netsharc2 days ago
  It's probably not hard to guess that the D&L people are in on the scam and that this Stefanski guy is giving them a cut of the profits, but a newspaper can't write such speculations down.
  But hey, welcome to the new reality, this is probably fine in the corrupt nation of Elonistan. Relevant: https://www.azquotes.com/quote/1062178
Panzer04a day ago
Shouldn't there be an auction system or something? Surely it's fraught to allow arbitrary employees to determine valuations.
An auction might not always get the best price, but it should prevent outright scams like this. I guess maybe not if the tow company is literally dismantling the car beforehand...
ydjje2 days ago
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