What A Mess!!!!!!!!!!

so i'm selling my 996 as some of you know. i thought i had it sold to somebody in nevada, but things have gotten a little scary! i had the pre-purchase inspection done, gotten a deposit from him, and had sent all the documents to his financing company to close the sale. all that remained to do was for him to arrange the shipping on the car (i'm 2000 miles away). well, this morning i got an email from him saying that his financing has fallen through and he couldn't take the car after all. ok, well, he forfeited his $500 deposit and i may have lost the sale to somebody else. not a huge problem, right? well, this afternoon i got a call from his financing company. the reason they turned him down at the last minute was that he was supposed to pay off the loan on his wife's car in order to get the financing for my car. he said he was going to, but instead he gave his mother the money for a deposit on a house, so they didn't give him the loan. the difference between the lease buyout price ($53K) and what i sold him the car for ($49K) was about $4000, which i paid out of my own pocket to end the lease early. so, i had sent his financing company a check for $4000 for this, and they were paying off my leasing company with one check for the $53K. the problem is, they already sent the check for $53K to the leasing company yesterday!!! they were going to attempt to stop the check from getting cashed, but it's been several hours and i haven't heard from them yet. so as of now, my car hasn't been sold, i'm out $4000 for the time being, and the title to my car will be transferred to some other company if they can't stop the check from going through. like i said, WHAT A MESS!!!!!!!

I doubt that your leasing company is going to release the title until they see the $53K check. If it comes and they cash it, then it is sold to the drop out buyer's finance company. You get out and it's not your problem. But I seriously doubt that the drop out buyer's finance company actually already sent the $53K check prior to approving their buyer's loan. That's just not the way banks work. Alas there is one more possibility, and that is that you've been scammed by someone who gets the seller to send a check to them first for consolidation. I don't want to jump to conclusions, but I'd get ready to call law enforcement. Not sure who, maybe start with your local police for a recommendation. Maybe the FBI. Good luck. This could be a mess.

ALWAYS have your own lawyers handle the money transactions. It is NOT a good personal business practice to send a $4k check to anyone you don't know. This may work out ok for you, I hope so. For your own sake, immediately cease believing anything is true just cause someone told you it was....... good luck man.

i was a little nervous about writing them such a large check, but i looked up his financing company on the web and they've been around for a while and seem to handle a decent amount of business. i just figure the hand writing the check in their company didn't pay attention to what the brain (the loan approvers) was doing!!!

Assuming this is not a scam with a fraudulent loan company, it sounds to me like you may have gotten what you wanted - maybe you did sell your car! On the other hand, again assuming its legitimate, hopefully you won't get stuck in the middle waiting for your money to come back. I think you should urgently tell your leasing company that the payment they may have received included $4,000 of your money and that if they intend to refund anything to the other loan company, they need to withhold that $4,000 on your account until you make secure arrangements to get it back fast. Good luck.

Has the $4000 check gone through / could you stop payment on it?

Sounds like a scam and I would contact your bank and your leasing company. Sorry to be so negative, but the lame excuse they gave sounds bogus and now they are trying to buy more time

the $4000 check hasn't gone through, which was one of the reasons i suspected they were legit. the name of the company is "automobile consumer services" (or ACS) and i found references to them being a financing company for high-end cars all over the internet, so they're legit, or at least are very good at faking a hundreds and hundreds of internet sites! that was what convinced me it was ok to send the check to them. they called me today to say that they haven't cashed my check, and they'll send it back to me once they get the $53K check from my leasing company. i left a message with their manager saying that i don't care when they get that check back, i want my check back NOW because i have nothing to do with this situation they created and i feel exposed financially every day that the $4000 check floats around out there. so anybody looking for a C4? it's (over) ripe for sale!

It certainly sounds like a scam, do you have infos like the home address or phone number or place of work for this potential buyer (anything other than a cell phone number), or is it that you have no way of reaching him if this turns out to be a scam. If you have no personal info, and if you think about your previous encounters he would have had a clever reason as to why you couldn't have those, if this infact is a scam. So, I think you should have enough information already if you think about your previous encounters real hard, you may have had hunches of some possible mischief (hunches are the results of billions of years of evolution working subconsciously, never ignore them). If you basically have no solid confirmed ways of reaching him and he had been elusive to these questions, i'll call the law enforcement. Good luck!

Teflon your last post wasn't up when i wrote mine, it sounds like a legitimate company, glad it worked out for you.

Stop payment on the check at your bank and that part of your worries is over. Steve

Regarding a "stop payment" - Legally a bank is only required to honor the request for 6 months. If the check is presented at 6 months and 1 day and you have not processed another stop payment, the bank can honor the check and it is the issuers responsibility to get the funds back. That is why you ALWAYS want to get the check back in your hands if you have any indications that it might be presented at some time in the future.

Don not wait and stop the check, Why wait? It will cost some money, but it's nothing compared with 4K, and I would notify your leasing company as soon as you can with a certified letter.

ACS leasing is who I recently used to finance my C2 Cabriolet. I found them to be very professional and give them a very high reference. ACS (Automotive Consumer Services) actually "shops" for the best finance rate amongst the various banks - my lease was ultimately underwritten by US Bank. For what it's worth, I'm confident that your check will be returned - these folks mass-market highline financing an your $4K is loose change to these folks. No affiliations, just a satisfied customer.