Really weird situation here.

My roommate is the big name and manages a few of the salons i own out here in china, weve been friends for about 4 years now.

About 2 months ago he tells me he wants to buy a Porche Cayenne. In china these cars costs about US $250000 new. I inform him he is an idiot and cant afford that car.

He later informs me that he is able to get a used one for about $30,000 because no taxes were paid on it (first time ive ever heard of this less than legal option).

I scream at him the following things:
1. Its going to cost you more than 30,000 to fix whatever is wrong with the car
2. You cant get a real license plate (which are hard to get out here anyway)
3. When you get into a car accident, and you will, the police will take you to jail and take away your car
4. you dont have 30,000 dollars.

He gave me the following responses
1.There is nothing wrong with the car, somebody checked it out (he is more than willing to lie about this to save face)
2. Ill buy a fake plate
3. Why would i get into a car accident
4. i have 25,000 i might need to borrow 5k from you

I obviously didnt give him a single cent for this car.

Futhermore i informed him that if he is late 1 day or short 1 cent with rent because of this stupid car he is out. My reasoning was i dont want his stupidity to influence me. He was pretty pissed about my saying that.

**Sidenote: its pretty stupid to buy your own car in Beijing. We live in one of the most heavily trafficked areas in beijing which is on the east side. He manages 3 salons on the north side, the closest of which would take 1.5 hours to get to buy car, 35 minutes by subway. Its about 15km away**


Fastforward, he ignore my advice and gets the car. Fine his problem not mine.

He decides to let me test drive it to one of the salons on Saturday. The transmission is slipping and half the buttons (like windows, cigarette lighter, navigation, stereo etc.) dont work. Fine, standard ******edness on my roomates part.

On what ended up being a 2 hour drive back to our house i noticed 2 things that didnt strike me as odd right away. First was that the speedometer is listed in MPH. I'm from Los Angeles so im used to this but there are no miles in china. the second being the temp was in Fahrenheit. Nobody out here know what the hell those things are.

I found both of these very odd, i took down is vin number and carfaxed it when i got home (also FU that thing costs 30 bux).

The car was reported stolen in Oakland, CA. Here it is in Beijing, China.

The most obvious play for me is to never get in that car again, which im fine with cause beijing has a decent subway system.

Is there anything else i could/should do without destroying this working-roommate realtionship that we have?

Tell him what you found out. (Maybe try to get him to chip in for the Carfax.)

Beyond that, probably not.

I'm more interested in the story about how you came to own salons in Beijing.

^^ to clear up they are legitimate hair cutting establishments. Not whore houses.

I didn't think otherwise. Are you still working an office job as well?

if he doesn't know already, what do you think his reaction will be to finding out the car is stolen?

if he known, what do you think his reaction will be to you telling him you know it's stolen?

Clearly this is why he can't afford a non stolen Cayenne, given what you've posted about your roommate I don't think it would be too hard for you to convince him to turn them into whore houses.

not sure if this is on same level as what im thinking but you could be an accomplice if you know its stolen and dont say anything right? its like knowing one of your friends murdered someone but you dont say anything or report it, you are "aiding" in the act kinda.....or no? i dunno i may be way off, either way i enjoyed reading it haha lets see some pics of the cayenne and your whore salons

I'm sure you'll be able to knock him over with a feather when you tell him that the 250k dollar car he bought for 30k is hot. Who would expect something like that?

My 9-5 is at alibaba. My hookers and blow money comes from these salons. The hookers themselves do not come from there.

My guess would be him spouting out gibbirish like "no its not stolen, just no taxes payed on it" or him getting really pissed that i didnt trust him or whatever. Even if i showed him the carfax report, compared the numbers on his car to the numbers on the website he would debate the website saying they are liars.

If he knew than hed probably still deny it.

This is kind of what i am worried about. Chances of him getting caught are relatively small, but not zero. Also i have no idea how chinese law works in this sense, but im guessing its not favorable for me.

Since when does a Porche Cayenne cost $250k?

1. Why didn't he have someone really check it out before he bought the car?
2. Do you think he knew that there was a good chance that it was a stolen car?
3. How much more often is he going to be late to work?

Roommate sounds pretty dumb. I'd think again about continuing to live with him.

Just keep updating the thread every time he does something stupid.

So he is an idiot and you know this. What is the point of the thread? Are you looking for advice on if you should snitch on him?

When my parents/grandparents were growing up in ny the car that people really wanted to have to display their wealth was a cadillac. In china its a cayenne.

Exactly the same car, but you pay 100% import tax, and demand is so high that they can charge whatever the hell they want for it.

I signed a 2 years lease on my apt with him (only about 8 months into it). And yes he is dumb and uneducated (dropped out of his second year of middle school).

Im not worried about him showing up late to work at all. For such a ****** he does a good job at managing salons and cutting hair. He is like 26 now and has been cutting hair since he was like 14.

It might cost $250k in China (which is absurd), but there are used ones for $20k on Craigslist.

Edit: Confirmed true. http://www.autoguide.com/auto-news/2...-in-china.html

What can be done anyway, it was stolen in the US.
I am pretty sure your friend is not going to report it anyway but you might want to tell him. (30k lost)
I wouldn't care if I had a car that was stolen in the US and I was driving it around in Finland.
Edit: Okay I would definitely have a dilemma on my hands if I knew it was stolen..

do i notify oakland police at all?

just give em a head up, something like "yo dont bother looking for this car, its in bj"

Pretty loltastic idea. If they care enough to be looking for it, do you really think they are just going to be like, "Oh cool, good to know. We have no interest in how you know that"?

Whatever you do just keep in mind that some of the participants of this situation are organized crime. What do they call the mob in china? $30k was the price of the car? I doubt that...$30k was just the down payment.

You should distance yourself from this guy because either people he owes will start trying to collect from you or he will start stealing from you to maintain his healthy wealthy lifestyle.

Maybe use an anonymous speech synthesizer or something I dunno

How do you own a successful chain of businesses?

They aren't actually looking for it.

I doubt anyone's going to come looking for this car. Follow all relevant Chinese registration laws and I don't see a single reason why any of you would have to worry. Unless you're having a bout of conscience about it? I don't get those so can't help you there.

Nobody's looking for stolen cars in this country unless it's stolen from a Miss America pageant winner. SHE JUST WANTS HER TIARA BACK.