Warning, poker metaphor incoming:

You hit ur 2 outer. Grats.

In this situation it's not really a risk at all. If the dealer takes the car and the cashier's check is fake, OP reports the car as stolen and his insurance company gives him back what he paid for it.

JASON IN DALLAS GOTTA JASON IN DALLAS.

Fleet car might speak to some idiot employee crashing it and then having it fixed on the cheap.

Congrats on getting your money back Pretzel.

Pics of check. No one gets this lucky lolz.

Congrats on it (hopefully) working out OP.

It really makes no sense for it to be a scam, but how the **** does OP accept an unverified cashier's check from a guy he recently believed to be defrauding him, and give him the car in return? What happened to this being a learning experience?

OP does not appear to be a lesbian.

Also, my guess before reading the thread was flood damage.

I was so certain that I would not be getting the money back that I hadn't actually prepared myself for him to just offer to give me a check on the spot. If he was willing to give money back, I expected him to make arrangements to pay me in the future. On one hand I wanted to try to make a more secure transaction. On the other hand I didn't want to piss him off and have him change his mind and say, "**** you, if you don't trust me I won't give you your money back at all". Unfortunately this was going down at approx 7PM so all banks were closed. The only other options I could think of involved me taking the car home and no transaction taking place. This gives the guy more time to reconsider, which is the last thing I want.

So I'm standing there with the check in my hand and figure that my best play is to take the check and hope it is real. If not I have the title, the guys name, and address.

will update after trip to bank tomorrow...

why didn't that crash show up on the carfax? was it unreported to the police?

even though you have been scammed, you might not be that screwed.

you drove the car and you said that it drove fine. whomever fixed the car obviously did a very good job (most likely a dealer, a real dealer). even thought the car has been through a wreck. it still might be fine and have a productive long life. subarus are pretty sturdy.

I guess you could have took his check, deposited it, and waited for it to clear in your account before giving him the car back.

That was probably the "safe play".

That's not necessarily true. The dealer OP took it to said the engine was not sitting straight. That indicates frame damage that was not properly repaired. Even if it had been repaired properly, the damaged frame was probably enough to total the car, had the accident been reported to insurance. The car should have a salvage title, which makes it worth about half as much as a clean-titled car.

The reason Carfax doesn't show the accident is that it wasn't reported to insurance. That makes it a lot more likely that the repair was done on the cheap.

I really want to believe that this is some elaborate level designed to teach everyone about avoiding scams, but I can't make myself do it.

You said it had dealer plates so he must be a dealer or work for one not a homebuilder. Sorry but don't think you will see a penny from him but I would call a lawyer or maybe a cop friend this sounds criminal. Was the vin altered?

Don't think the VIN was altered.

He stated that he previously did flooring for new homes, but with the housing market crash there was no business so he changed to selling cars to try to make ends meet.

Have you bothered to google the guy?

Worst case kick his ass unless he skipped town. Tldr the whole thread but yeah if this isn't a level it sucks to be you. I myself was robbed last summer and again this year but don't want to post another thread. What would you do if some scumbag followed you around the poker room peeking at your cards and took 3l from you then you stack him at 1/2nl and he asks for 500 in chips and takes back 300. Was up for 2 days and knew something was wrong but later when the guy called time when he wasn't on a hand the whole table ratted him out and the floor came and he gave me the money back. So the guy robbed me and didn't get banned and followed me back to 2/5 then I stacked him again,lol. There was like 20 bucks in the pot or less, I flopped a straight and went all on and he called. The ****er didn't get banned but still took like 2g from me. Should I get him lumped up?

Wow, the result I never saw coming. You run good pretzel.

banhammer.jpg

did not read op or responses, just the title

obv this car gets called in stolen and it ends up torched somewhere

gg

Pretzel, I want to say 2 things:

1: I'm glad you got your money back. It seems the guy is honest.

2: More importantly, I want to commend you on the fact that in the face of OOT mostly pointing and laughing at you, you didn't regress into defensive little bitch mode. You kept a self-deprecating tone the entire time and not once did you lash out of defend your horrible decision. Very rare. Well done Sir.

Its like the opposite of a Nigerian Buy-Back

update? check clear?

Took the check to the bank today. Everything checked out legit and the money is safely in my account.

Looking back at the whole sequence of events, the funny part is that the minor recall is the only reason I took it in to the dealer and found out about the prior crash. If that recall did not exist, I probably would have just taken the car to random oil change places a couple times a year and never brought it to the dealer. I doubt they would have noticed or mentioned the crash. If the car was in good enough shape to last a few years I might not have known about the previous crash for a long time.

Need to do some serious self analysis to figure out how my common sense failed me so hard in this scenario. Believe it or not I've actually had a pretty good track record of not doing stupid stuff prior to this incident.

I'm also trying to figure out which of the following scenarios is more likely...
1. Dealer really didn't know about the damage.
2. Dealer knew about the damage and just tried to sell it to me hoping that it was fixed well enough that I wouldn't find out for years, with the plan that if I found out he would refund the money.

Both seem possible. Not sure which is more likely. My read on the dealer is that he is an honest, sincere guy. I'd like to believe that #1 is true. Probably will never know for sure.

If anyone wants to link me a good thread about ways to get the best deal on a new car that would be appreciated...

Wait... how much did you tell him on the phone or whatever before you went to meet with him? Doesn't it seem slightly odd that he showed up with a cashier's check for $20,000 in hand?

20.k seems like a lot of money to pay for a 98 dodge stratus to begin with