Victim of Odometer Fraud
 

My family friend recently purchased a vehicle off craigslist, private sale.
For some reason he failed to take the proper precautions in making sure that the car was in good condition/free of any sort of things like this.

Now he recently found out that instead of the 50k was supposedly on the car, there is over 220k. He didn't think this could happen seeing as the car had a digital odometer.

What can he do now? He does have the sellers info/address, but.. he doesn't want to sue as this guy is the "gangster'ish" type and he fears being the victim of an attack.
The seller is not picking up his phone any longer as well.

Is this just a lesson learned?

Used cars are "as is".

Your friend is hooped. All you can do try to prove that because of the excess kms, the original contract is void. Even that would require more info and would need for something to be written.

Regardless, what kind of thing would he do since he is afraid of this "gangsterish" type person? Looks like your friend is SOL.

If it were me, I'd go over to the person's house and knock on their door and if no one answered, I'd leave a note. After that, I would go ahead and try to sue (depending if I had a contract that stated the kms with more detail).

1) original ad with stated km's
2) evidence proving the stated km's are false
3) void original contract since item is not as described
4) ??????
5) profit


just keep in mind, it's always BUYER BEWARE in these situations

how hard is it for the buyer to plug the VIN# into the aircare website and take a look at the recorded km's ?

Kinda out of luck.

What car is it? I didn't know digital odos could be tampered with.

I believe he bought it private off of craigslist. And he does have evidence that the stated KM's are indeed false.. The car is an '08 Honda Accord.

Can craigslist pull up ad's that have been deleted in the past? He's stressing out a great deal right now heh.

Not sure if you can recall a deleted post from craigslist, but it's always worth a shot to ask.

Even though the ad is deleted, buyer can retrieve the ad from the cache history given that he hasn't cleared the cache history yet.


If neither of these two work out for him, unless he's got some sort of printout or written document signed by seller that shows the false description of the vehicle, it will be buyer's word vs seller's word, therefore buyer loses.

08 with 220,000 Kms? what the hell what this guy doing? that would have to be a cop car or a taxi to get that kind of Kms on it

yeah.. no idea.
how can he retrieve it from cache history?

flip the car to another sucker like ur family friend ...

Wow... let's say the car has been on the road for two years...

220,000km in two years would mean the car was driven 300km per day, every single day.

Damn.

that is illegal, tiger =P
and yeah.. hard to believe but.. unless the dealer's maintenence records were wrong, that's what it says.

220,000 on an 08..WTF.

On the dealers maintenance records, did it go up gradually? (10,000 - 30,000 - 50,000 - 90, 000 etc) or jumped? (from 10,000 - 220,000) But within two years its hard to tell. It could have been the dealer's records error. There are no other evidence stating that it is 220,000km, since there is no aircare for new vehicles. So you can get away with it being as 50,000km.

One of my old cars had been turned back from 320,000km to 160,000km.

I figured it out when i was randomly checking my VIN after selling that car and realized the "true Mileage" that was on the car....

I know it wasn't the dealer who did it, but I think the dealer should have told me that.

Not blamming anyone here, just a good lesson learned.

He is halfway to to the moon :D

WTF indeed. Considering "average" yearly mileage is generally within the 20,000-30,000km range, I think 50,000 sounds about right...

So what is the "evidence" that the numbers are false?

isnt tampering with an odometer some sort of criminal offense?
whats the evidence of the actual milage?

I apologize everyone, as the car is not an '08 but it is an '06.
The evidence is undeniable - he took the car to the dealership where it was serviced and they had odometer records of the car whenever it came in, and the last service was at 226k. He has the logs from the dealership.

He could have swapped another gauge cluster. And yeah its illegal to mess with it.


The owner transfer form that the buyer/seller fills out requires you to state the "Odometer Reading". If the form stated 50,000km and you have sufficient evidence that the vehicle has 226,000km, this shows the previous owner tampered with the odometer prior to selling so your friend should be able to sue.

^is that ICBC form enough for him to win the lawsuit?
can't the seller just say he got the car from somewhere else and had no idea prior to selling it to my family friend that the car had over 220k on it?

That form is enough for him to win if he is the second owner, if not then he is pretty much screwed.

I believe that it is still the seller's responsibility to sell something that is legally "Sell-able"

ie: if you sold a stolen iPod, even though you didn't know it was stolen... in the end YOU could be the one prosecuted.

Can someone confirm Captain Picard? If so I'll let my friend know that if he decides to pursue a lawsuit that he can depend on winning it.

The fact still remains that his family is fearing some sort of violence following a lawsuit..

grow some balls and sure the guy

226,000 is still a helluva lot of miles for a four-year-old car. Was this car previously owned by a travelling salesman or something??

Doesnt matter, ignorance isnt a defense.

He is legally declaring that the goods he is selling have 50,000kms, if they do not, they are not the goods he is declaring, and the contract (which is implied, if not written) is null and void.

-Mark