[HN Gopher] How a Connecticut DMV Employee Made Thousands by Sel...
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How a Connecticut DMV Employee Made Thousands by Selling Towed Cars
Author : hn_acker
Score : 50 points
Date : 2025-03-07 18:35 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.propublica.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.propublica.org)
| pj_mukh wrote:
| "According to the DMV case report, whenever D&L employees went to
| the DMV office, they would make eye contact with Stefanski, who
| would then allow them to cut the habitually long, slow-moving
| lines. In exchange for this favor, the report said, Stefanski
| would spend his days off walking the company's lot selecting
| vehicles that had belonged to other people only weeks or months
| prior. D&L would then undervalue the cars on DMV forms,
| investigators said, allowing Stefanski to buy them cheaply and
| resell them for a profit."
|
| What? They're giving away cars just to cut in line? That seems a
| pointlessly costly deal. Maybe I'm not understanding the scam
| correctly.
| datadrivenangel wrote:
| Preferential treatment may be quite valuable, but this
| definitely seems a bit overkill.
| vonmoltke wrote:
| > What? They're giving away cars just to cut in line? That
| seems a pointlessly costly deal. Maybe I'm not understanding
| the scam correctly.
|
| You're not. As the article notes
|
| > Under state law, the profits from sales of towed cars are
| supposed to belong to the vehicle owners. Towing companies have
| to hold onto the proceeds for a year and turn over any
| remaining money, after subtracting their fees, to the state.
|
| This means D&L doesn't give a shit how much they sell the cars
| for as long as they get more than the towing and storage fees
| for them. Depending on how many cars they deal with, it might
| actually be more profitable to turn them over quickly for
| pennies on the dollar than let them sit in the yard and rack up
| higher fees.
| djeastm wrote:
| The towing company isn't getting the profits from the sale of
| the cars. The law has the money going to the state if the owner
| doesn't claim it within a certain amount of time. So their
| incentive is just the favor and clearing out vehicles that
| don't benefit them quickly (and possibly a small kickback from
| the seller to the towing manager, but that's just my
| speculation)
|
| Pretty sad that after all that investigation no one seems to be
| held accountable, but I suppose that's life these days.
| thenewwazoo wrote:
| So I think it goes like this:
|
| * D&L Auto Body & Towing tows a car, incurring tow and storage
| fees
|
| * vehicle owner doesn't (or can't) recover the car, and D&L
| Auto Body & Towing may now request permission from Dominik
| Stefanski to sell the car to recoup costs if the car is worth
| less than $1500. state law says money from the sale above the
| towing and storage fees goes back to the (now-former) owner
|
| * Dominik Stefanski lets D&L Auto Body & Towing cut the line
| (saving time, and time is money) and grants permission to sell
| the car, in exchange for letting him preferentially purchase
| the car for under $1500
|
| * D&L Auto Body & Towing misrepresents the car's condition in
| DMV paperwork to justify (to Stefanski!) the low valuation,
| which enables the sale. Dominik Stefanski purchases the car for
| less than $1500, but presumably more than D&L Auto Body &
| Towing's actual costs. the (former) vehicle owner gets cheated
|
| * Dominik Stefanski then restores the car to its condition when
| towed, and sells it for a tidy profit
| thrance wrote:
| Now I wonder how long that line possibly could be, to justify
| losing hundreds of dollars simply not to sit in it.
| nullc wrote:
| I don't think the D&L is losing anything in that
| arrangement. They're only ever entitled to the towing and
| storage fees. Any excess above the towing and storage fees
| goes to the owner.
|
| Fairly pricing the car may make it take longer to sell.
|
| Assuming that towing is much more profitable than storage
| and that their business is mostly storage limited (e.g.
| they could tow more but their lot quickly fills)-- then
| anything that helps them quickly turn over cars-- including
| fast sales and line skipping-- can make them a lot more
| money.
|
| The only way selling hurts them is if they're so towing
| limited that quickly selling cars will leave their lot
| empty when they could have otherwise been earning storage
| fees. And even then, a car with storage fees in-excess of
| its value will never get picked up nor sell for more than
| those fees and could easily turn into a loss for them.
|
| Given that crooks like these can probably just go around
| and tow random cars should their lot ever be too empty, I'm
| going to guess that not having enough to maximize their
| storage income was never their problem.
| pj_mukh wrote:
| Right, so it Feels like the employees of the Tow shop can
| make a lot more money by selling it to themselves (or family
| members, or however it can be laundered), but instead they
| traded that opportunity (scam) cost for a shorter DMV lineup.
| Doesn't seem sensible (as far as highly illegal scams go).
| cogman10 wrote:
| The DMV employee had to sign off on the condition before a
| sale and I think that's the catch. If the tow employee lied
| and tried sell it to their family/friend then they could
| have been caught/fined by the DMV.
|
| The scam works because the two company can quickly collect
| money from the DMV employee (no need to store the car on
| the lot for an extended period of time) and I'd guess with
| a premium they both agree on for all the hardships of the
| towing.
| netsharc wrote:
| It's probably not hard to guess that the D&L people are in on
| the scam and that this Stefanski guy is giving them a cut of
| the profits, but a newspaper can't write such speculations
| down.
|
| But hey, welcome to the new reality, this is probably fine in
| the corrupt nation of Elonistan. Relevant:
| https://www.azquotes.com/quote/1062178
| ForOldHack wrote:
| Just Connecticut? You are looking at almost every single city in
| America doing what American cities do best: Denying the property
| rights without due process, and profiting from it.
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(page generated 2025-03-07 23:01 UTC)