Crazy Dealership Scandal Involving GT3(RS)'s, Deposits, and $2.5 million

[G.Irish]

So apparently Champion Porsche, one of the largest P-car dealers in the US had a VP who was defrauding customers who put down deposits for GT cars to the tune of $2.5 million.  Apparently about 25-30 people put down sizable deposits on cars, and he routed the money through a fake business account and skipped town.  Bunch of the victims calling the dealership and being told to talk to their attorneys.

https://rennlist.com/forums/991-gt3-gt3r...li-13.html


This is kinda fascinating to me as I've watched the GT car feeding frenzy build in intensity for a couple of years now to the point that it's as crazy or crazier than the Ferrari purchasing process.  Seems like in the enthusiast game, anywhere there's a lot of hype, inevitably scammers will appear.

[Kaan]

$2.5 million isnt worth running with IMHO... where do you hide? central america? somewhere in asia? africa?

someone who is a VP should be making enough money that 2.5 million isnt really a temptation... especially at that company

[WRXtranceformed]

Read through a bunch of that thread that really sucks but...I don't care how badly I wanted something like that you would not catch me putting a sizable deposit down on something like a vehicle for the possibility of getting one. There is literally no reason to other than some dealers forcing it. If the demand is really that strong for a vehicle like that, a dealership will have no problem selling it or giving up your spot in line to someone else if you skip on the payment / pickup.

And I don't know a lot about car dealership cash flow or how the financials of their manufacturer buying / selling to consumer process works, but in my mind if a dealer needs your deposits up front for any reason I would strongly question the viability of that business or what is going on there.

That's just me though sipping Kermit tea judging rich people's first world problems.

---

And it sounds like I'm not the only one that feels that way, from a guy with over 12k posts on that thread:

What a joke this whole Porsche GT car deposit thing is. Some USA dealers are probably holding a couple million $$ each in interest free $$. I wouldn't trust them with my money.

[G.Irish]

Kaan you make a good point,. $2.5 million bucks is not a huge sum here, but could last you a long time in other parts of the world. Or it could've just been someone up to their eyeballs in debt who got desperate.

Yeah Lee, it is very suspect to put down that huge of a deposit but he may have bamboozled people by telling em that they needed to make the deposit as a final step for locking in the order with Porsche. Then he provides them with a fake confirmation number from Porsche's ordering system. Then again, it might've just been people blinded by hype and trusting that they wouldn't get fucked by such a large and well known dealer.

Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using Tapatalk

[WRXtranceformed]

Kaan you make a good point,. $2.5 million bucks is not a huge sum here, but could last you a long time in other parts of the world.  Or it could've just been someone up to their eyeballs in debt who got desperate.

Yeah Lee, it is very suspect to put down that huge of a deposit but he may have bamboozled people  by telling em that they needed to make the deposit as a final step for locking in the order with Porsche.  Then he provides them with a fake confirmation number from Porsche's ordering system.  Then again, it might've just been people blinded by hype and trusting that they wouldn't get fucked by such a large and well known dealer.

Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using Tapatalk

Yeah it sucks it was such an apparent well known dealership, but as we know nobody is too big to fall.  Another quote from the thread:

this really sucks. Shows what a feeding frenzy the Porsche GT market has become that something like this could happen. I’ve ordered a lot of Porsche’s/GT cars over the years and never put a deposit down, so if a dealer asked me to put a large sum down on a future build I’d be a bit skeptical to begin with. 

[ScottyB]

whoa....Champion has been part of the Porsche culture in the US forever, that's terrible that their name is going to take the brunt of the bad press on this. i'm fascinated by these kind of "exclusivity games", and the fact that people are so willing to pay outrageous money for a high place in line.

i always wonder if some guys make a business out of paying for top spots and then turning around and selling them to other desperate buyers. i imagine you can only do that if you buy enough cars that a dealer won't suspect you'll try to scalp your place in line on a regular basis.

[JPolen01]

i always wonder if some guys make a business out of paying for top spots and then turning around and selling them to other desperate buyers.  i imagine you can only do that if you buy enough cars that a dealer won't suspect you'll try to scalp your place in line on a regular basis.

The article doesn't say how much of a deposit this guy had to pay but he made some serious money flipping Dodge Demons.

[WRXtranceformed]

whoa....Champion has been part of the Porsche culture in the US forever, that's terrible that their name is going to take the brunt of the bad press on this.  i'm fascinated by these kind of "exclusivity games", and the fact that people are so willing to pay outrageous money for a high place in line.

i always wonder if some guys make a business out of paying for top spots and then turning around and selling them to other desperate buyers.  i imagine you can only do that if you buy enough cars that a dealer won't suspect you'll try to scalp your place in line on a regular basis.

I thought I read in that thread that there were "brokers" who were selling spots in line for GT cars for $50,000.

Come on, how stupid are you to pay for a spot in line to buy that car.  These aren't that rare man, it's not like you're buying a One-77 with only 77 ever made.  There are literally 77 GT3 RS's for sale on Dupont Registry right now in pretty much any color you want, and I wasn't even looking hard.  There was another thread on Rennlist posting production numbers and Porsche is producing thousands of 2018-2019 GT3 and GT3RS's every month.

https://www.dupontregistry.com/autos/res...1--gt3--rs

---

Yep, here's $50k for the chance to spec your own 2019. Haha get out of here man, how do these people get so rich yet be so foolish?

https://www.dupontregistry.com/autos/lis...rs/1858967

[G.Irish]

whoa....Champion has been part of the Porsche culture in the US forever, that's terrible that their name is going to take the brunt of the bad press on this.  i'm fascinated by these kind of "exclusivity games", and the fact that people are so willing to pay outrageous money for a high place in line.

i always wonder if some guys make a business out of paying for top spots and then turning around and selling them to other desperate buyers.  i imagine you can only do that if you buy enough cars that a dealer won't suspect you'll try to scalp your place in line on a regular basis.

There are absolutely people doing this.  There are dealerships in on it too.

Back in early 2000's when we did those Ferrari of Washington tours (and I crewed for them), I met one of their mechanics who was into racing and everything.  A few years later after he left the dealership I was talking to him and found out that the dealership had got caught up in a fraud scandal.

Apparently the dealership had purchased some Ferraris in the names of their employees without the employees' knowledge in order to get more favorable allocations from Ferrari NA.  They got caught when an employee got a VA car tax bill for a $200k car.  Employee sued and the dealership got sold to someone else.

---

I thought I read in that thread that there were "brokers" who were selling spots in line for GT cars for $50,000.

Come on, how stupid are you to pay for a spot in line to buy that car.  These aren't that rare man, it's not like you're buying a One-77 with only 77 ever made.  There are literally 77 GT3 RS's for sale on Dupont Registry right now in pretty much any color you want, and I wasn't even looking hard.  There was another thread on Rennlist posting production numbers and Porsche is producing thousands of 2018-2019 GT3 and GT3RS's every month.

https://www.dupontregistry.com/autos/res...1--gt3--rs

---

Yep, here's $50k for the chance to spec your own 2019.  Haha get out of here man, how do these people get so rich yet be so foolish?

https://www.dupontregistry.com/autos/lis...rs/1858967

That's the essence of a hype bubble, people taking leave of their senses and ignoring clear evidence that they're making a irrational decision.

For some of the players in the market, they have so much money that a $50k or $100k markup makes no difference to them. But there are other people who buy into that shit because 'they have to have it!' because it'll earn them status or because they think they can make money. Add to that FOMO that burns like fresh gonorrhea, and you get people paying money for a spot on a waiting list just so they can order a GT3 in a slightly different color. 'Ooooohhh a PTS GT3 in Periwinkle!'

[JPolen01]

Lee I get what you're saying. To a normal plebe like us it seems insane. Rich people pay for things to have them when they want them. $50k is nothing to someone worth millions upon millions. If that's what it takes for them to have the first gt3 of their crew they will do it. There's a good vinwiki about the founder selling a new GT2RS to a client for an absurd mark up but then the transporter fucked up and wasn't going to make the client's delivery date so the client cancelled just because it was going to be a day late and miss the event he wanted to bring the car to. We can't begin to understand what these people with obscene amounts of money think.

[WRXtranceformed]

Lee I get what you're saying. To a normal plebe like us it seems insane. Rich people pay for things to have them when they want them. $50k is nothing to someone worth millions upon millions. If that's what it takes for them to have the first gt3 of their crew they will do it. There's a good vinwiki about the founder selling a new GT2RS to a client for an absurd mark up but then the transporter fucked up and wasn't going to make the client's delivery date so the client cancelled just because it was going to be a day late and miss the event he wanted to bring the car to. We can't begin to understand what these people with obscene amounts of money think.

I know, I watched that video and was like 

I get it, you want to have something to brag about to your buddies when you roll up before your tee time.  But yeah like G said, it's complete hype and I don't really have a problem victim-shaming people who tie up that money for years at a time for something that's really not that rare in the grand scheme of the automotive world.  I saw a few people on that original thread that said they had deposits put down for 1.5 to 2 years with some dealerships, and then others who said they were able to buy GTs without a deposit at their dealer.  If I ever become a ten or hundred millionaire+, I'm still not going to be the one who ties up my money for the chance to buy something.  If you're really to the point where money is no object and you want something that bad, you go convince someone to sell it to you directly and pay them what it takes for them to sell it.

Or like I said, you jump on Dupont Registry / Cars.com / Cargurus etc. and buy any one of the hundreds that are for sale right now

[G.Irish]

Usually the deposit is like, $1000 and is refundable, at least for Porsches. Don't know what it looks like for some of the higher dollar brands like Ferrari, Bugatti, Pagani Zonda, et al. Some of those wealthy guys will get a call from the dealership like, 'Sup, we're about to sell 99 of our super secret model, you in?' and rich guy responds with an earnest money check for $50k or something. But that's more in the realm of hypercars and generally more exclusive stuff than GT3's.

[WRXtranceformed]

Usually the deposit is like, $1000 and is refundable, at least for Porsches.  Don't know what it looks like for some of the higher dollar brands like Ferrari, Bugatti, Pagani Zonda, et al.  Some of those wealthy guys will get  a call from the dealership like, 'Sup, we're about to sell 99 of our super secret model, you in?' and rich guy responds with an earnest money check for $50k or something.  But that's more in the realm of hypercars and generally more exclusive stuff than GT3's.

Right, which is why I would think it would have thrown up a bunch of red flags when people were asked to deposit that much money.  The last I saw on that thread, it was about 24 people and somewhere around $2.5M stolen?  You do the math and those aren't insignificant sums that were being put down on average

[plaugs_golf]

That's insane! I wonder how long it will take for him to be caught. Didn't read the forum, so I don't know if he was caught yet or not, but still. That's crazy

[G.Irish]

That's insane! I wonder how long it will take for him to be caught. Didn't read the forum, so I don't know if he was caught yet or not, but still. That's crazy

If he's smart, he's long gone.  If he's still in the US when federal indictment(s) come down, his gonna do a good amount of hard time.

[WRXtranceformed]

If you read through that thread, apparently he had been sued by the dealership before but they kept him on as an employee. My guess is that the dealership is going to face some liability as well when it's all said and done

[G.Irish]

Yeah there had to be one or more other people at the dealership that were in on it. If you got sued over this guy trying to pull a fast one over a 911R sale, the most logical course of action is to fire that guy. But they kept him on and then this happens. You'd have to be massively incompetent, to the point of being mentally disabled, not to see the huge risk of keeping someone like that employed at your company. Or, the most logical conclusion, you were in on it.

This story is gonna be huge, automotive media is already digging into it:

http://www.thedrive.com/news/23576/a-vp-...r-deposits

I'm sure the feds are involved at this point, and that means there may be multiple people going to jail here. The VP may not be the only one that needs to flee.

[Evan]

Hopefully this results in Automakers reigning in their dealers and applying strict policy to pre-orders and markups.

[WRXtranceformed]

i always wonder if some guys make a business out of paying for top spots and then turning around and selling them to other desperate buyers.  i imagine you can only do that if you buy enough cars that a dealer won't suspect you'll try to scalp your place in line on a regular basis.

The article doesn't say how much of a deposit this guy had to pay but he made some serious money flipping Dodge Demons.

I just now read that article and wow, good on that guy.  That's what I've been doing on a much smaller scale with some watches that are in super high demand.  It is a risky venture though in that you really only want to bank on that in a good economy like right now.  If all of a sudden the car market turns or there is a downturn in the economy, you're sitting on something that even rich people don't want to put money into.  Economic downturns are when you see all of those extra supercars being sold off for pennies on the dollar

[D_Eclipse9916]

i always wonder if some guys make a business out of paying for top spots and then turning around and selling them to other desperate buyers.  i imagine you can only do that if you buy enough cars that a dealer won't suspect you'll try to scalp your place in line on a regular basis.

The article doesn't say how much of a deposit this guy had to pay but he made some serious money flipping Dodge Demons.

  Economic downturns are when you see all of those extra supercars being sold off for pennies on the dollar

So you are saying there is a chance ill own a dream car at some point in my life