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Car Sale Scam, Civil Suit vs. Civil Standby

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Ray Leowe

Junior Member
Oregon:

We purchased a car from a local seller on Craigslist.
We met them in person and made the exchange.
Two nights later the car was towed out of our driveway by a group of men who'd been admittedly hired by the seller and had documentation in hand claiming that the full amount hadn't been paid, and therefore the car was being repossessed.

We have documentation proving all of the agreed terms, times, dates, photographs, bank statements, etc.. It's water-tight.

The seller has not responded to our dozens of attempts to contact them and reconcile without legal action. They have not responded.

We are worried that they will skip town if we don't get this resolved immediately, although upon meeting they seemed like a very normal, professional couple with a young family.

We have filed a civil suit in our county against them and have all of their information, address, etc..

My question here is: what is the optimal course of action in the opinion of the experts out there as to how we should go about this situation?
All we want is to be done with it and retain either our money, or the vehicle. We're not interested in anything else. Currently, we've been flat-out robbed of nearly 10,000 dollars... So 'moving on' is not exactly an option...

Thanks in advance for any insight.
 


Ray Leowe

Junior Member
@LillianX:
No, we were not. It was established that we would meet the next day or two once our cashier's check was honored. We have a bill of sale, and we felt good about it given the fact that we were in possession of the vehicle as 'collateral.'
We were totally blind-sided by this. They only live a few miles away in the same city. It seems absurd that they would try to pull this off, yet we're feeling incredibly vulnerable, and aren't quite sure what to do at this point as the seller has continually refused to respond to our attempts to contact them.
Thanks for your help.
 

Ray Leowe

Junior Member
Thanks @swalsh411

Yes, we did go to the Sheriff's office and file a report as well as civil charges.

But the seller has still refused to reconcile, and I guess it's not the sort of thing that the police will actively pursue since it's now after the fact. So I suppose we'll just have to go through the long-haul of a civil suit unless we become aware of any other course of action we can take.

Any other ideas?
 

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