Crooked dealer headed for jail

toedtoes wrote:

fulltimedaniel wrote:
My sympathy for the victims ends where their gullibility, stupidity and credulousness begins.

If even ONE of them had done the simple straight forward due diligence this kind of transaction deserves probably none of this would have happened.

I am sorry but I think the so-called "victims" are mostly victims of self inflicted harm.

The sentence is just as crazy. 7 years in jail. No way to pay back the money. And the court does have the ability to force him to pay. But the real way to get him to pay is bring a CIVIL case against him and take his house and car, 401k, insurance holdings etc. It can be done with the right lawyer.

A victim isn't less a victim because they are stupid, ignorant, disagreeable, slutty, dirty, etc. There is a limit to the "buyer beware" standard and this guy went way beyond it. He defrauded people. He committed a crime. He pays for his crime - no excuses because he only defrauded stupid people.

As for his paying it back, let's look at the numbers from the article:

15 counts of fraud, so likely about 5-10 different customers.
Max money lost about $28,000. Figure low to be around $4,000.

That equates to a total of about $20,000 at a low point and $ 280,000 at a high point.

His house is worth $300,000 and there is "little equity" in it. That probably equates to about $30,000 in equity. Even if he sells it for over value, we're probably only looking at around $50,000 above what is owed.

His car is 16 years old. Probably only worth about $4,000.

So, at best he'd have around $54,000 to pay back all his debts. Plus there's the other business debts he may have that will also have to be paid back. Per the article, he said he was basically robbing Peter to pay Paul.

That's the obvious reason the judge sentenced him to jail - because he knew this guy can't pay back the money and won't be able to pay it back. These are most likely older customers who don't have 40 years to collect $1000 per year in garnishments from a minimum wage job. He's now a convicted felon - he's not going to get a good paying job somewhere else.

Personally, I'm glad to see a business owner go to jail for defrauding customers. I think it's become too common in this day and age and they just receive hand slaps.