Convicts at Car Dealers, Part 1

If the car dealer’s employee is willing to steal from the company that pays him, what makes you think they won’t steal from you too?

Today we start a 5 part series of true stories of car dealers and their employees. Employees who were caught stealing from the dealership in one way or another. From a salesman in Vermont to a million dollar thief in Southern California and a lot of stops in between. But first, Vermont...

In the car sales business a new salesperson is called a green pea but, as Bennington Subaru found out, some green peas are rotten. Bennington Subaru hired a young salesman named Benjamin Hammic. He didn’t know much about selling cars but he was energetic and wanted to learn.

If they had checked him out carefully, the general manager might have found out that he was on the lam from a New York court and under sentence from a Connecticut court. Hammic was a two time loser looking for chance number 3. And he found it at Bennington Subaru, where they apparently don't ask a lot of questions before hiring a salesman (or maybe they do).

On his second day at the dealership he was studying Subaru model information when he took a break and walked off the job. Well, that’s not entirely accurate. It’s more like he drove off. In a nice brand new car. After awhile management must have started thinking it was a pretty long break because Hammic never came back.

A week later the stolen car was recovered while being driven by three kids in Massachusetts. As for Hammic, he called in from Connecticut and said he had just borrowed the car and someone had stolen it from him. Yeah, right.

You have to wonder how a guy with a warrant and a conviction could end up getting hired in the first place. Well, maybe the manager thought he just had “the right stuff.” They probably figured he’d steal alright, just from customers when they came to buy a car and not from the dealership itself.

If a car dealer is willing to hire convicts, crooks and thieves, it shouldn’t surprise you when you realize they stole your trade in on the paperwork, ripped you off on the Gap insurance cost, or packed your deal with window etching that you didn’t know you were getting either. After all, who is better to steal from customers than a thief? Only thing here is the thief stole from the car dealer first. Usually they pay them good enough to keep the thievin’ on the retail end — that’s your end and it can cost you money, so watch out!

If you’re the victim of a car dealer’s fraud, call us. We go after car dealers (and manufacturers) every day. It’s what we do.