Recovery scam...

Darragh29

Just wondering what folks think of this.. I've recently become aware of an organised scam which involves a recovery company and the local Garda station. The way it works is:

(1) Say your car breaks down and you have to leave it where it is and walk back to the town or someone collects you from the scene, but in any event, you have to leave your car there overnight.

(2) Next day/morning, you go to where you think your car is and it's gone, so you report it as stolen and go down to the Garda station. They advise you to check a local recovery company, go down to the yard and there is your car.

(3) Out comes the most ignornant gimp you've met in your entire life, with a bill of 180 Euro, which is made up of an "out of hours" recovery charge, and a storage charge for the day, with VAT thereon, and you will not get your car back until you pay your bill, and by the way, cash only, thank you.

When this guy is asked how your car came to be in his yard, he gives the standard response, "I do all recovery for the Gardai in this district and we were told by the Gardai to recover this car". If you ask what Garda gave that instruction (remember this isn't a crash situation and the car was blocking traffic or anything like that!), he says, "We don't have that information, it comes in on the radio and we just do what we are told".

Basically the long and the short of it is that this guy drives around in his truck at night and if he passes a broken down car, he takes it upon himself to put the car on his truck without consulting anyone. He insists to folks who have their car taken by him that he gets a call from the Gardai telling him to recover the vehicle, but he has admitted to me that this in fact only happens when there is a crash, he is basically allowed to recover vehicles at the side of the road by the Gardai whenever he wants to, in his down words, "ya see, they'll back me up if someone gets smart, I'm in with the Gardai here because I do all their recovery work"...

What would you do if you became aware of this??? Also, I imagine the right palms are being greased in the Garda station for this to be able to happen in the first place...

Gregor Samsa

Darragh29 wrote: »

What would you do if you became aware of this??? Also, I imagine the right palms are being greased in the Garda station for this to be able to happen in the first place...

That's a pretty serious allegation to make, and if you have any evidence you should take it to the Garda Ombudsman. You'd want to to be more that "imagining" that it's happening, though.

http://www.gardaombudsman.ie/

Darragh29

phutyle wrote: »

That's a pretty serious allegation to make, and if you have any evidence you should take it to the Garda Ombudsman. You'd want to to be more that "imagining" that it's happening, though.

http://www.gardaombudsman.ie/

This isn't happening in Dublin btw. I only became aware of this after one of my regular customers had his car lifted by this guy. After my customer had paid your man, I bumped into him and brought up the subject of this particular car. It was then that he said that he takes it upon himself to collect cars from the side of the road. You'd need to know this guy to understand how thick he is, he was essentially bragging about this to me, how it was so easy for him to make money out of it. He'd be that thick, he wouldn't cop that he was basically incriminating himself.

peasant

very serious allegation indeed

I very much doubt that the gardai would be "in on it", no matter what your man claims.

Thread to be re-opened if and when you can contact me with evidence of this being the case rather than presumptions