Dealership Carjacking is a Lesson to Car Shoppers

You may have heard a recent story in the news about a car dealership employee charged and convicted of carjacking a customer over a possible missed payment incident. Aside from a carjacking that could have turned fatal, there is a lesson here explaining what car shoppers need to know about signing a car loan and their rights.

Car Dealer Employee Convicted of Carjacking In Bad Repossession

According to a recent Steve Lehto YouTube channel episode, WPLG channel 10 Miami News reported a story about how and why a car dealership employee was convicted for carjacking and is now awaiting a sentence that could reach as much as 15 years in prison.

In brief, here is what happened:

A customer bought a car at a dealership and signed a car loan agreement arranged by the dealer with a third party. Like many car owners, the customer sets up an autopay account to keep his payments current so as not to default on his sales agreement with the seller.

However, the autopay account developed a glitch during the initial setup, and the loan agency contacted the car dealership to inform it that payment was delinquent and that the loan agreement between the lender and the dealership had met its contract's default requirements. The loan agency told the dealership to pay the loan back in full.

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This resulted in the dealership attempting to repossess the car, tasking one of their employees. The result was that the employee became overzealous and began physically assaulting the car buyer and threatening him with death unless he turned the car over to him immediately for repossession. During this contact between the two, the car buyer had no idea who was assaulting him, and when he saw a gun displayed by the employee, he wisely relinquished the vehicle, left the scene, and called the police.

The conviction that followed afterward was successful because the dealership had no legal right to repossess the vehicle. Secondly, the repossession was done in an illegal manner that involved a firearm. Which is a federal offense.

A Lesson to Car Shoppers

Aside from the horror story of what could happen whenever buying a car from a dealership that decides for whatever reason to repossess your car, a lesson to car shoppers revealed in the Steve Lehto episode is that of who legally possesses the vehicle until the car is paid off, who is financially responsible, and to what point.

According to the host, if you buy a car from a dealership and use their loan department arrangement to pay for the vehicle, you need to understand that two separate transactions are happening:

1. The deal you make with the dealership agreeing to pay so much monthly on the car loan.
2. The dealership's deal with the loan agency that supplies the funds for buying the car.

Should something go awry after the deals are made, you might not be answerable to the loan agency but are accountable to the dealership that made the arrangements. In other words, if, through no fault of your own, the transaction goes south as it did with the autopay glitch described, it is the dealership's problem and not yours to fix through the lending agency.

The host gives an example of this where a dealership called a customer requesting a car back, attempting to fix a problem of their making. The customer was savvy enough to know that the dealership was trying to pass their problem on to them, and they refused.

The significance of this is that you are not made aware of whatever conditions the loan agency makes with the dealership. And if the dealership should ever come after you, they might not share all the details of why you are asked to return a car you bought from their lot.

For more details about these points, turn to timepoint 6:00 of the video to see why it is so crucial to know what deals could be going on and whether they affect you whenever you use financing from a dealership.

For additional articles related to car dealerships, here are a few useful ones for your consideration.

• Truck Dealership Predatory Practices You Need to Be Aware Of
• Used Car Dealer Forced to Buy Back As-Is Car It Sold
• The Biggest Car Buying Mistakes You Can Make with a Dealership

Timothy Boyer is an automotive reporter based in Cincinnati. Experienced with early car restorations, he regularly restores older vehicles with engine modifications for improved performance. Follow Tim on Twitter at @TimBoyerWrites for daily news and topics related to new and used cars and trucks.

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