Crooked dealer headed for jail

toedtoes wrote:

What would you have them do at that point? The loan process is separate from title process. If they stop paying on their loans, they are in default and their credit rating is ruined. The bank isn't going to care that they don't have the titles, all they care about is getting the money back on the loans.

Since when is the loan process separate from the title process? When have you ever bought a house, auto, etc. with a loan where the title wasn't part of the process? The title is the legal respresentation that what you're buying does in fact exist. These types of purchaes are secured loans, whereby the purchased item is the collateral. The only way this scenario is plausible is if the buyers used some other form of collateral (like personal cash or property) or if they simply took out a personal loan based on credit or income...and if that's the case, then they are partly to blame for their foolishness.

This isn't too unlike the housing bubble that burst several years ago. Did the homebuyers with $60K a year jobs bear any of the blame for buying $400K houses, or was this only the bank's fault.

I'd tell the lending agency to show me the title and then I'll make payments. Otherwise bug off. Credit isn't ruined forever, and if these people were all elderly (as the article states), then good credit does them little good in the long run anyway.