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As the saying goes” you can’t change a pickle back to a cucumber “.  I like many others that work hard for the money and we’re intentionally deceived much like what happened with Bernie Madoff. For me its not about the financial impact, but more about justice and doing the right thing.  I do not believe I walk alone. That’s what makes this country so great.

Last edited by Techdave
@Stan Galat posted:

I was going to let this pass, but I decided to answer it.

Firstly, I'm really sorry for what you endured. It's awful to be singled out by a sociopath.

I might get hit by a runaway bus while walking on the sidewalk, but that doesn't mean I'm going to hide under my bed in case it happens. Free speech is a bit like that - stuff can happen, but living in fear of an unwarranted and irrational lawsuit seems to me like a pretty lousy way to move through life.

As to the personal aspect of your post - respectfully, Dave, you've got no idea how much I (or anybody here) have or haven't had to pay for exercising the right to express an opinion, or to defend oneself against a frivolous lawsuit (or governmental overreach). But even given that - the people sharing their experiences are not expressing opinions, they're stating facts. Cancelled checks with nothing to show for it are infinitely (by definition) different than getting something you perceive to be less than you paid for.

One is subject to interpretation, one is not.

Not my personal experience. One related to me over its course. Run with scissors if that makes you feel free. It’s not my call. But IMO we shouldn’t do it on Theron's white carpet.

@dlearl476 posted:

Not my personal experience. One related to me over its course. Run with scissors if that makes you feel free. It’s not my call. But IMO we shouldn’t do it on Theron's white carpet.

David, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act is what protects a content host from liability from what others post on social media.  This is how platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, ect can exist.  I’m with Stan, I don’t believe Theron has much to worry about, in regards to what others post.

Last edited by LI-Rick
@dlearl476 posted:

Stan’s obviously never spent $100K and three years of his life defending himself from a bs defamation suit brought by someone who took offense to being called a liar over a misrepresented motorcycle from an online classified ad on a motorcycle forum and “called Saul.”  

The backstory on this is probably really interesting. Perhaps you could start another thread and give us the complete story?

And you've got zero knowledge of what any one of us have been through and spent over the years, just as we've got no clue about your personal battles.

Adam:

I understand your frustration about thread drift. It is a time honored tradition here, and I wouldn't expect that to change if I were you.

Having been registered on the site for a week, you may not be aware of that.

This certainly isn't the first time the hobby has been victimized like this and it probably won't be the last.

In at least one case, that of SAS, the folks that were taken advantage of set up their own board to exchange information and discuss legal strategies etc. Doing so in this case might alleviate your frustration and keep the discussion limited to the single topic of interest.

I hope everybody recoups their losses.

Thanks for your comment. Since the backlog had grown to 3+ years, I assume there are many more recent victims. In fact Matt had bragged to me a year ago that with build prices increasing over 50% from my contracted price and the backlog growing, he had new customers who would pay a $30K premium to jump the line, and that he could get that for me if I wanted to sell. Just a guess but I'd bet he was playing games w/ that dynamic to stay afloat.

I assume he was ok when the business was predictable but when covid hit with supply chain problems he was screwed and got desperate. But he was a BSer from the beginning.

Add me to the list of people who put a deposit down !!

Well, unfortunately I’m one of the customers that got screwed out of my deposit.  A few month back I told Matt I wanted my deposit back.  He said he would have to get another contract on the car before that could happen.  Then he told me that these cars were going for about $25 k more than my price.  Like a dumb ass, I told him to keep working on it.  And here I sit, out my deposit and pissed off beyond measure.  I was ready to fly out there myself to aggressively encourage him to give me my money, but today I find out he went out of business.  I gave him every opportunity to make things right, and he didn’t.  I wouldn’t piss on him if he was on fire…unless I was pissing VP racing fuel.

Hi Folks,

my name is Christian and i own a Restauration Shop for Classic American Cars in Germany.

I do Imports since 15 Years to Germany, I never had such a bad expirience with other Shops. I ordered the first cars from Kirk Duncan, the Founder of Vintage in Hawaiian Guardans L.A.

Well a little here and a little there. Then he sold the Company to Justin, a Guy who had no Idea about cars. Then Matt took over. Well, what shoud I say: I wish i could deal with Kirk again. I had six cars in line... I was waiting on cars for over two Years. The only thing i heard from him are excuses. The Quality is very bad. I had new cars with paint chips repaired with a paint pen, two cars with burned engines after 800 Miles, wipersystem wrong installed.

So we decided to take the engines out and check them before leaving it to the customer. Not even one engine was build correct.

I had a broken front axle!!!! On a new car the steering is broken...Missing Parts...The list is so long....since August he was telling me that one of it is ready to ship. We had a fix date to pick it up, but i didn´t believe him, so i didn´t send a truck. What should i say... It was not ready. I asked for Pictures... Nothing. Six weeks later after hundreds of Messages, he told me, that the car has the wrong interieur and he is waiting on the material...

Well there was no chance to get any information from him.. Then the E-Mail with the Bankruptcy! I have nearly 140.000,00 USD in his Company, most of the Money are Deposits, the rest are complaints and the parts and labor to resolve them. I didn´t sleep that night and the first thing I thought about was how I could pay back the down payments to my customers. Thank God I had earned well in the last few years despite covid. After informing everyone, I was able to pay three quarters of it back directly. Unfortunately, part of my car collection now has to be sold in order to satisfy my customers. You won't believe what I was allowed to listen to, even though it's not my fault.

So i called my chamber of commerce and they get me to a attorney in Phoenix.

To make things clear: Here in Germany this is a scam! The deposits are to be used to cover parts and costs required to build a vehicle to our contract. And not to plug financial holes! So if anyone wants to join my lawsuit, here is my email address: chr.ruehl(at)caronics.de

Christian,

I feel for you and all the other victims. I have have about 38K in deposits and an additional 4K in in legal fees. I dropped my lawyer last week only for the ongoing cost. It just did not make since to keep pushing to make pennies on the dollar. Vintage Motor Cars in Hawaiian Gardens is certainly a better option for you any anyone else looking for cars and parts. I highly recommend you file with the Arizona Attorney General Office and the Goodyear PD. If you wired money to VS, I would also recommend to put a claim in to your banking institution.

Last edited by Techdave
@imperial posted:

I doubt there will be much money left  unless  he was hiding piles of money thru the years ,  and I doubt that ,

It is amazing how much money a poorly run business can go thru ,

Do a police report  , Attorney General report and see if your bank can do anything ,

Then get on with your life ,

Sorry this happened…..

I agree about how much money a poorly run business can go thru, on the other hand, if you just look at what they all claimed was the backlog (2-3 years),  minimum $25K deposit per, and a modest 2 cars estimated per month, you've got well over $1 million in deposits for undelivered cars. Even funding operations for some time with customer deposits, I would not assume it all got burned up.

Thanks all, I just found this forum thanks to Anna from VMC.  I also lost money with Matt.  I never did receive an email so this was helpful Troy thank you.  Matt was not the most organized person for sure but I didn't see this coming.  My last communication was September 10 and then no responses.  He played it off till then for sure asking about "samples' I should have received.  It's sad for so many people.  None of us deposited our last dollars but it still stinks.  The little Speedster has also been a dream of mine since I was a kid and somehow Matt has tainted it.  I hope that someday I can tell the story and laugh a little.  I too will contact the AZ Attorney General but not in hopes of getting any money back.  I will just be more cautious in the future if I ever pursue this again.  Also, good to know that there is this great community of owners....maybe someday for me too   In the meantime enjoy the time you have in those little gems that I still spot miles away on any street.  Blessings.

I'm really so sorry for the losses you guys have suffered - not just the money, but as Ben said, "the tainting of the dream". A dream is a hard thing to lose, harder than money, IMHO. Even worse to me is the loss of trust in other people. Not everybody will let you down, but it's really hard to know who it's going to be if you've been really, really burnt.

I hope you can all reclaim your trust.

Last edited by Stan Galat

Stan, as usual you've summed up what all of us here are thinking in just a few sentences, and I regret that I only have 1 like for your post above.  All of you caught in this miserable web- most of us here do feel for you, and (as Stan said), worse than the "tainting of the dream" is the loss of faith in other people.  I'm sure you'll all bounce back, but yeah, it still bites.  I hope you all do find cars and join our little community.  Al

PS- @MidCentury- I hope that with time you'll get to the point where you can realize your dream.  I've never been burned intentionally by anyone, but I did lose upwards of $60,000 in the mid-'80's in a friend's business venture (but that was because of his ineptness and my foolishness in believing "the dream") so I understand a little of what you guys are going through.  Stay in touch here until you get there- this is a pretty good group (except for Danny, of course, but what can you do...)

Last edited by ALB

Thanks guys, I would love to be invited to the private forum of "Teerink" victims.  BTW, nobody gets in this deep in business without first recognizing that the water is up to his knees.  He had to know when it was waist deep but I am positive he took deposits when he was up to his neck in commitments.  Lot's of help out there in business especially for a unique product like this.  There are Angel Investors that would have loved a company like this.  I am also betting dollars to donuts that he took PPP money, ERTC money, and possibly one of the EIDL loans from the SBA during the period he started struggling.  So many avenues to commit fraud, I wouldn't want to be him.  No one ever wants to see a document that reads "The United States of America vs. "your name here" and I bet he gets one of those before it's over.  I'm glad I only lost $20k+/- and not my dignity. 

In 2003 I built the first Subaru powered Spyder ever with Greg Leach  at the then Vintage Spyders. First Subaru car ever for Greg so he asked me to source the engine. There was a company in Temecula that was rebuilding Subaru engines and putting them in sand rails. I met the owner and discussed my build with the engine builder. I even asked the owner whether I should purchase a new short block. He assured me that he would use a low mileage engine and it would be fine. When I got the car it had so much crank case pressure it would blow the crankcase breather filters off and drench the engine compartment with oil. Did a blow by test which showed incredibly high pressures. Turns out the engine builder had quit months earlier and the owner was going out of business and selling people old worn out turbo charged sand rail engines.  I guess I’m lucky to have received any engine. So I had to buy a new short block and have the engine rebuilt. A buddy of mine rebuilt it. $5k later I was back on the road. I guess $5k is not that much but this was 2003. The whole thing put a really bad taste in my mouth. Mentioned I was thinking about selling the car on Spyderclub.com. Some rich guy from Ft Lauderdale called the next day and asked me how much I had paid for the car originally and I told him $36k. He offered me $37k and I said sure. He sent a truck and a cashiers check the next day. Got heavily into motorcycles and sport touring. I built a Caterham Super 7 myself and eventually got an intermeccanica. But I never stopped thinking about spyders. In 2017 I called Greg Leach and told him I was ready to try again. Talked to John at Outfront and insisted on a new short block. I’ve got over 5k miles on the car and have never had an issue. So don’t give up. Do your homework. A dream doesn’t always have to turn into a nightmare.

Last edited by 550 Phil

The unfortunately is nothing new to report either in the private forum or this thread. At this time no one has heard from either the PD or the Arizona AG office in regards to if they are going to be filing charges. The AZ police have advised not to call them to file any reports as they have so many at this time. All complaints need to be filed with the AZ AG office then if they take the case they will compile all info and work with Goodyear PD. There is a law firm (Turner Law Firm) in AZ which has taken the case of a couple different people however there is a heavy retainer plus hourly fees. I was the first to file with AZ police and AZ AG and have not heard a word since doing so.

The Goodyear police have specifically told me to remove my initial post with the phone number and my case number. They are taking no further reports and encourage all parties to contact the AZ Attorney Generals office. They must take the case first and will determine if there are criminal charges to file. Until they can prove fraud there is nothing you can do to persuade them. Simply running a bad business is not a crime. That is a civil matter, not a police matter. The AZ AG is reviewing all complaints. Now if he sent you a vin or progress pics of a car, then sold that car to another party knowing this, then that is fraud. That is what they need.

@Andrew1111 posted:

I think if people want to keep talking to police that they should do , i never heard of a police force saying stop calling us to report a crime ?? The more people the better. They will have a better understanding of everybody's situation .  Please keep complaining to everbody . I don’t want Matthew Teerink to get  away with anything .

It reminded me of the message I got once...  leave a report of your theft and we will get back to you... they never did get back to me and this was after two thefts in our area.  We don't have property rights and we don't have a second amendment here either.

In my experience (30+ years as a newspaper reporter), city and state police have neither the skill set nor the inclination to investigate fraud. Cops love to chase car-jackers and drug dealers; every so often they'll go after a "serial rapist." But flim-flam artists? Pyramid schemers? Insurance and mortgage fraud rings?

Forget about it.  

You're more likely to find a municipal cop committing those crimes than solving them.

In all my time as a reporter I can recall only one instance in which a local law enforcement agency announced and pressed criminal fraud charges against someone over a business dispute. It was Sheriff Kevin Beary of Orange County Florida. The defendant was an Orange County deputy sheriff . . . who had just announced his candidacy for high sheriff.

Now it is true that the US Attorney from time to time will rouse him- or her-self to target fraud. But private business frauds are way down on their list. Way below, say, food stamp fraud, or mortgage fraud, or public corruption, which are way below a lot of the drug gang sweeps, terrorism investigations and other stuff they do. Some FBI guys, Posties, etc. know how to read a spreadsheet, but even they don't spend much time on that.

It's a matter of resources.

If anyone wants to get a working idea of how much fraud can be carried on, unmolested by the constabulary, gendarmes, or assorted jack-booted flatfoots of any description, just google pink sheets stocks and dive into a few companies. There are thousands of them. Don't invest.

@edsnova posted:

... But flim-flam artists? Pyramid schemers? Insurance and mortgage fraud rings?

Forget about it.  

You're more likely to find a municipal cop committing those crimes than solving them.

... or taking deposits on Speedsters, as the case seems to be.

Google: Officer Matt Teerink, Phoenix City Police. I'm no longer confused with the indifference being shown by Goodyear's finest.

Last edited by Stan Galat

I was always under the impression that Vintage Arizona bought the Vintage Speedsters company and that gave them the legal right to advertise that they had built over 3,300 Speedsters.  Turns out that they only bought the Vintage Speedsters assets, not the company so I don't see how claiming you built thousands of Speedsters when you only built a few wouldn't be fraud.  Making that claim is what gave the buyers the confidence they were dealing with an upstanding company and write deposit checks for 50% of the Speedsters total cost.  I'm no attorney, but if that's not fraud, I don't know what is.

The legal definition of fraud is the same for civil and criminal matters.

The difference is in the burden of proof. A civil plaintiff must prove their case by a preponderance of evidence. That's like 50 percent plus a wink. A criminal prosecutor has to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt. That's a lot harder.

Example: When DJT formed "Trump University" to sell real estate seminars and "coaching" to gullible people for $35,000, and did it without notifying New York higher education regulators even as he claimed Columbia, Stanford and Northwestern University were affiliated with the scam. He operated out of his pocket and lacked even the most basic corporate clothing; Trump personally owned 93 percent of the business.

Trump lied about picking the instructors personally. He lied about everything, basically. TU was by every public measure an open/shut felony case for any state attorney general who cared to take the task.* NY AG Eric Schneiderman ended up leading the charge—as a civil matter.

Trump ended up agreeing to pay $25 million to settle. Months before that I called Schneiderman's office to enquire as to why, given such a juicy target, he chose civil instead of criminal.

His spokesman never answered it. She claimed (falsely, it turned out) that her boss's hands were tied by a provision in the law that prohibited him from developing the criminal case without first getting a referral from a law enforcement agency.

Trump, of course, was able to pay the settlement. That's what makes a civil claim viable.

In our instant matter, it is doubtful that the defendant will have sufficient assets to attach. And that's why fraud goes unpunished.

All that said, the line between fraud (Trump has spent his career on the far side of it) and normal business failure is blurry. Vintage Arizona may have had every intention of making good on its promises, suffered unforeseeable financial setbacks, and collapsed more or less honestly. That happens every day, particularly as economic conditions shift.

=

*The main impediment to Trump's "university" was that the flipping houses market was already saturated. When TU appeared, Baltimore City had at least three notorious "real estate schools" operating on the same principles. At least one still operates and is one of the state judiciary's online portal's most consistent advertiser. Fraud, unchecked, begets fraud.

I got caught up in the CMC backordered parts debacle back in late '80.  I was lucky, I did get all my parts and some cash compensation before the Florida Attorney General took action against George Levin.  This was before the internet, so I was flying on my own.  Seems someone needs to summarize all these cases and publish an article on (I guess) RCN magazine to warn others of issues.  I've not seen VS AZ's demise anywhere but here. A side mention of SAW/SAS would add interest.

I find it weird that there is still a CMC web site!

Classic Motor Carriages - Speedster

@edsnova posted:

In our instant matter, it is doubtful that the defendant will have sufficient assets to attach. And that's why fraud goes unpunished.



All good points, and clearly civil fraud is the sensible claim. I would only argue the point about the defendant being judgment-proof. Having collected well over $1m in deposits for un-built cars, with rent and major obligations paid current, never a late payroll (not to mention a 5-month orchestrated exit from the scene)...these are not the indicators of a business that has been having cash flow issues and has stretched its resources until there was no more.

The leaked email with claims of poverty was a good ruse. It could be he was that poor a businessman to burn through all the deposit money, but I wouldn't operate on that assumption.

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