Projects Can't afford a 32 3 window, make one.

simply amazing

 

WOW! Dave you just don't get it, even you the builder cannot give a unbiased opinion of the value as well as a true description of the vehicle, example, calling a glass car a 1932 Ford. Your statement of description relates to the fraud charges. That is why you need an appraisal, if there is an issue the Insurance Company can only refer to the appraiser and not the owner. As far as being suspected in the theft that is the owners concern and must be proven in a court of law. Larry

 

Larry,I don't understand you,there are literately thousands of glass 32's out there and are titled as such,,David didn't built a kit car like the Classic Motor company offers.

Hindsight is just that,,if David had it to do over maybe he could or should have done something different.

He has been beaten down by the insurance company,lost his car,lost his business and he comes here try to clear up his name,,and there are still members that don't know him from adams house cat and keeps kicking him in the balls,,lighten up on the man.HRP

 

I don't understand the statement "don't insure anything". I dunno about anywhere else in the world, but here in NY the DMV will not process your registration application without proper and valid insurance.

If someone destroys my car, I'd want it insured for it's market value. That's what I do, anyway.

 

In Pennsylvania my glass 32 is labeled as SP Constr on the title,No year is given,It had to be inspected by a enhanced inspection station(reconstructed auto) and proof of insurance and receipts. Took 10 days to get tags. My insurance is thru CHROME at a dollar amount (20000) anything over that amount had to have an appraisal to insure for more money. Pete

 

There are cases where insured cars were wrecked and an appraiser was sent to inspect the car and found a single digit mistake in chassis or VIN numbers, and the insurance company refused to pay, stating the car was a different car than they insured.
For those who would toss stones, make sure you've got all your T's crossed and I's dotted before you find yourself in a similar situation. I was lucky to discover our state DMV made a VIN number mistake on the title to one of my cars, and got it corrected. Had I not noticed their mistake, and something happened, my insurance company would probably have voided any claim. I tossed the title in our lock box, and didn't even find the mistake until I went to get year specific plates and it showed up. Took DMV months to dig through their records and find where they had made the mistake!

 

HRP, I have been on Daves side from the beginning, all I am trying to convey here is that it is very common for owners like Dave when describing their cars in a statement to the Insurance Company to refer to it as simply a 1932 Ford Coupe, with no reference to the fact that it is fiberglass, as well as describing his rebuilt engine to being a new one. That is where the Insurance Company has the fraud ammunition. What he does not seem to understand is that a 3rd party appraiser would include all these pertinent details in the body of the appraisal therefore leaving no doubt in the Insurers mind what type of vehicle they are dealing with.

Sorry for the confusion, I honestly believe Dave got screwed here Big Time. I just don't want see others get burned the same way. Larry

 

all the best Dave I hope you recover from this

 

Count me as another that wants the name of the insurance company.

 

Seems to ME that if they were concerned and suspecting fraud they should have never accepted his statement of worth and his money to pay for the policy.

This just seems like a sleazy lawerish way of getting out of having to honor the obligations they made when they took his money,and they never once had any intention of paying out on the claim. Otherwise why would they even accept a owner's statement of value and insure a car for 70 grand that they hadn't even seen?

I don't know what else happened here,but it seems clear to me the insurance company is guilty of fraud and theft.

 

Tossing you to the wolves by having you arrested also guarantees you are too broke to hire a lawyer to take them to court for not paying.

IMHO this is most likely to happen with those big nationwide insurance companies that don't have local agents who have to look you in the eye. They rarely have big claims because people who spend mega-bucks and years of their time building cars tend to keep them locked away,but when they do get a claim they just send in a "legal hit team" to look for the slightest reason to avoid paying the claim.

 

This needs to be repeated over and over. Those of us who enjoy this hobby spend tens of thousands of dollars on our cars,so it's only using your head to spend a couple of hundred more to protect it and protect you at the same time.

On top of that I still recommend insuring with a local company where you have done business and who can and will send their own appraiser out to place a value on the car before they agree to insure it. Between their appraiser and your appraiser,you have a lock on the insured value.

 

Thanks for clearing that up. I've been wondering how the people with fiberglass bodies and new chassis get their cars titled in different states.

Here in NC now they automatically send a DMV inspector around to physically inspect your car or truck to make sure the numbers on the title match the numbers on the car,and it is what the title says it is. If you have the bill of sale from the various parts like engine and chassis that you bought you can still get it titled as what it looks like. For example,my 1937 Dodge commercial series truck is still titled as a 1937 Dodge truck despite the fact it is sitting on a 72 F-250 4X4 chassis and still has the FE engine and running gear. I think I would have been in a heap of trouble if I hadn't had the 72 Ford F-250 title as well as the original 1937 Dodge title,though. What they did was issue me a new NC DMV VIN number to put inside the door jamb.

I have no idea what they do with cars like Total T kit cars,though. I'm guessing it is something similar to what is done in Pa.

 

When you purchased the kit from Total, body chassie ft. axle ect for$3995 you would get a Manufacture Certificate of Origin

 

thank you, i hope others understand my message also.

 

Thanks.

I'm a little surprised you can buy them that cheap. 4 grand isn't a lot of money these days.

 

Only know Dave through here, will probably never get to meet him but surely would like to, he has been pretty genuine in everything he has said & done with this car & I see no reason to knock or doubt the man.....think about what you are implying or accusing him of......you don't spend hundreds of hours of blood, sweat & tears over a numbers years in building a masterpiece like he & his Family did just to make a claim for an amount from an Insurer that would barely cover the amount for the whole Project......when you can go down the road of finding a cheap coupe, insurer it for what you want to make a claim......his beloved Coupe was insured for reasons & those reasons were for protection against Fire, Accident or Theft......I live in Oz & have a 35 Ford Pickup under Construction here & it is covered by what is called lay-up Insurance for the sum of $40k & that amount will certainly be raised once the Project is finished, for a couple of hundred bucks a year, it's peace of mind against the very thing Dave is going through at the moment.....chin up Dave as someone out there knows something & I hope they catch the Mongrels, but in the mean time my Friend, you need to take care of your Health & your lovely Family & remember you have support far & wide

 

OK I liked this thread when it was still in the hands of the builder and I read the post theft forward. I also googled and read the articles.

I was also in law enforcement for a while so I am adding that as a qualifier.

1. For the atrocities that the police are known for, the % of times something stupid happens vs. them trying to do their job right is extremely small. With the number of charges reported, they must have had a mountain of evidence that pointed to suspicious activity. I'm not saying proof, just evidence.

2. ANY not true information provided to insurance, registration, etc., is going to result in fraud charges and will guarantee at the very least fines and probably jail time depending on the severity of the crime. 70-90K puts it in a very bad category.

3. I can't imagine anyone who wouldn't feel lied to if they put down the assumed value in cash to purchase a mostly original 32 Ford. To find out it was mostly fiberglass and scavenged parts, no matter how painstakingly massaged and refinished, would make my blood boil. Before anyone throws out the "he was never going to sell it" card, when a person insures a vehicle, as is the law in this country to operate one, he is basically giving the insurance company the right to buy it in exchange for the cost to repair the damage.

I have no problem with the members of the creative automotive community saying their salvage 350 is a numbers matching 283 in the parking lot on cruise night. Telling insurance and the government when registering and "creating" receipts for work done... not the same thing.

Again, I don't know facts but there would have to be a mountain of evidence for them to take this to the point of arrest. If a single part of his story is not true, I don't believe any of it, including the explicit details of the arrest night, handcuffing children, pulling people out of showers and sticking weapons in childrens faces.

It just seems a little too fantastic to be believable.

 

Only one problem with your point of view. If all that were true the judge wouldn't have thrown out almost everything the police and DA's office charged him with. Evidence is only good if it leads to prosecution, and stands up in court. If it doesn't then it's just considered piling on, like tossing 20 lbs. of crap at a wall and seeing what sticks.
What is also irritating is that they seem to have used their investigative skills towards proving this was a sham, and not towards trying to retrieve the '32. So now their desk is cleared, case closed, but Dave still doesn't have his car back. If his car is still out there they should still be looking, not choosing the easy way out, by charging the owner with false claims that didn't hold up in court.
Just my opinion.

 

Not all police departments are honest. Know of a story of retired New York couple bought property down south and had a house built. Old established neighbor argued about property line. NY couple had survey done to prove it. Red neck neighbor killed them both with shotgun!! Red neck's brother chief of local police, killer got off.





Ago

 

Unless the car is recovered and an acomplish discovered, how can you really prove anything.

It frustrates me when I hear stories about police departments and prosecuters going after people not for justice but to add another conviction to thier resume. The car could turn up in Panama linked to some car theft ring and I gaurantee the DA and police would never issue a policy or admit they were wrong.

The problem is they have the money and resources and can usually bully and scare you into a plea deal, I'm sure it happens all the time. May be he was involved but someone who puts that much love into a car I don't see it. In any situation, the evidence is really, really weak. "Forged" documents, yes, but give me a break!

 

Nowhere did I read that the judge threw anything he was just not formally convicted (adjudication withheld)hence the 3 years probation. It is my understanding that in most U.S. states it is pretty much the same as a guilty conviction minus the penalty and criminal record attached to a guilty verdict.

I find the whole story strange and parts of it almost unbelievable so I am not sure what to think.

 

What that smells like to me is a plea bargain to avoid bankruptcy and losing everything he owns to pay lawyers,bail,and to pay his bills.

When you are locked away and the DA offers you a quick deal to a misdemeanor that requires no jail time if you plea out,and lets you know you will stay locked away under high bail and be facing years in prison if found guilty,there aren't many of us who won't take the plea. Especially those of us with children.

Meanwhile,the police and the DA get the conviction they need to justify their overreactions and bragging rights about "crime solving".

The system is rigged unless you are truly a criminal and have something to give them that leads to a bigger arrest and court case for them.

 

Insurance company's bottom line is profit, they will try to bully you and they don't care who they screw to get there profit,i had one of my cars stole and turned in to a french fry some 30 miles from my house and they the insurance com. accused me and wouldn't pay, now were talking $2000. not a hundred thousand,it became a matter of principle for me, not the 2g as much as the assholes calling a thief,i had to lawyer up and sit down with the two insurance lawyers and mine and give sworn statements me my wife and daughter, for 2g, my thought's while sitting there were what the hell are they paying the two lawyers and some guy from the court system just to screw me out of 2g,i knew i was going to lose most if the money to the lawyer but the assholes were calling me a thief. this company is( not on your side!)

 

Still a lot of discrepancies in the stories. I am not saying he is guilty but it seems like a lot for a guy charged with insurance fraud and I am not one of those guys who eat up stories of police/justice system corruption because "they are all out to get us". I also find the 5:30 am SWAT team story hard to believe especially when all the news articles from a year ago said he was taken into custody on a Tuesday afternoon. Something still isn't adding up.

 

The thing you're not comprehending, I think K13 is that in your mind you're still imagining the criminal justice system as it was 25yrs ago.

25yrs ago you would have been absolutely right to doubt that the cops would send SWAT at 5am to arrest a guy over insurance fraud charges.

Today however, that is sadly not the case. In the US today, the Dept of Education has SWAT teams that they dispatch to "no-knock" raid the houses of people suspected of student loan fraud or refusal to repay. SWAT teams get used to deliver warrants in all kinds of idiotic cases. Earlier this year a SWAT team was used by the USDA to inspect a rural Amish farm they suspected of selling raw milk. They pointed machine guns at Amish people over RAW MILK!! That's not even a criminal offense. Worst they could have done was fined them, full stop, and they brought machine gun wielding men in black pajamas with them.

Think about that.

Things are not like they once were in the US of A, and the broken and out of control criminal justice system is just the tippy tip of a very large iceberg.

So no, I don't doubt for a moment doubt that they sent SWAT after him over insurance fraud charges, and I don't doubt that the DA way over charged him to induce a plea bargain.

If it only happened rarely, I'd be as dubious as you are, but when you look even just a little bit into how the criminal justice system works here now, you'll quickly find that things like this happen literally every single day in multiple places all over the country in regards to the most trivial of things.

Mr Turkey is damned lucky that he was as clean as he was, or they would have had him doing hard time as part of his plea deal. The fact that they pled down to probation and nothing else tells me that their case was flimsy as hell. When they have a slam dunk air tight case, they go for the jugular every time (better headlines, dontcha know).

I'm not anti-good cop, but as time goes on, they are getting to be much fewer and damned far between.

 

Don't you guys think it's about time to get past all the drama,,this was such a great build thread and now it's turned into Perry Mason verses (insert whatever)

Dave has come back,,he's beaten and been screwed by the people he thought would help,,his attitude is exactly what mine would be in his place.

LET IT GO...I hope David can overcome all the BS,,including the crap some of the fellow hambers are throwing his way. HRP

 

Agree!! Pete

 

Fucking Cops! All that drama over a car. A long time ago I was walking home a couple miles at 4 AM. My hot rod died on the way home. I was trying hard to get home, get tools/parts and get back to my baby before someone stripped it. Near my home I flagged down a Cop car in hopes they'd help me get back to my car faster. They turned around, hauled ass to me, jumped out and smashed my face sideways against the hot hood. I said are you fucking kidding me? If I was doing anything illegal why in Hell would I flag you down? Don't get me wrong, there are good Cops. But the bad ones are real assholes. Sorry about your bad experience

 

Yeah the bad ones are real assholes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92QlZ1pQGm0