Dealer Fraud

Leasing is an important profit center for dealers and a frequent area of automobile fraud. Often this involves abuses as to the terms of the lease, such as the amount exchanged for trade-in, down payments, or rebates; higher capitalized costs than represented; manipulation of residual values; exorbitant early termination penalties; and even deception about whether the transaction is or is not a lease. If your lease terms are confusing to you, and you think you have been deceived, contact us.

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An astonishing percentage of car sales involve fraud. Automobile fraud is so prevalent for a number of reasons. The sheer volume of American car expenditures is enormous–hundreds of billions of dollars a year. In addition, both by necessity and by dealer ingenuity, car purchases are complex. The sale involves compliance with state titling and registration laws, often involves trade-ins, financing, leasing, physical damage and liability insurance, credit insurance, service contracts, options, and other fees. This complexity provides ample opportunity for confusion and deception.

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[ To Learn more our services and areas of practice, please visit our website at

www.DealerFraud.org]

Having handled a number of odometer fraud cases, one sees the same excuses, over and over.   The position of automobile dealers in odometer fraud cases is usually the following:
• first, suggest that the odometer was not really rolled back, and there is simply an error,
• secondly, if it did occur, explain that the dealer has been in business for over 20  years, and would never deliberately alter an odometer, in view of the penalties involved.   Instead, the dealer professes, we are as much a victim as you.       
• thirdly, suggest that the consumer has received substantial use of the vehicle which should offset any claim.

Dealers practice the 4 D’s, delay, deny, distract, and deceive.  To respond to these tactics, it is generally useful to have an attorney experienced in automobile fraud.  We argue that the dealer’s professed lack of knowledge of consumer fraud is irrelevant.  If the vehicle was sold with an altered odometer, the dealer is liable and if others are responsible, it is his responsibility to locate them.   Rollbacks are usually done by a third party, two or three levels removed from the dealer, though sometimes the dealer frequently knows something is wrong.

When selling a car, dealers can manage to write a purchase order, arrange financing, and prepare motor vehicle documents in a single day.  Yet when you contact them about an odometer claim, things go very slowly.  There is only one person who handles claims and he comes in but once every two weeks.   Months can go buy while dealers purport to plod through their evaluations. 
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[ To Learn more our services and areas of practice, please visit our website at

www.DealerFraud.org]