A Porsche Salesman Walks Away With $2.5MM In Customer Deposits On GT Cars That Don't Exist...

I have bought and sold a number of high transaction price vintage cars and I have used what amounts to a 3rd party "escrow" service that verifies that I have the title and the person has the cash or vice versa. Title and money pass through the service.

In a dealership, the finance people typically handle the money not a sales person or a VP acting like a sales person. The reason for this is to prevent the very thing that happened here.

When we take deposits, the number of deposits taken corresponds in some way to allotment we are projected to have and which we can show the customer or more importantly the manufacturer if need be. The money in our business model is furthermore held in escrow and not a part of the general funding account. When we have actual production orders we attach the deposit to the car, but the buyer can opt out and get the deposit back as a check and balance of the money moving from embargo to being ours. Typically when we have a production order in the system, we settle on the price of the car with the customer before the deposit is put in the general fund.

With all the safeguards and procedures for "Deposits" that exist at dealers - one must remember that high level executives do have the ability to circumvent the procedures they have instituted. IF a crook really wants to rip someone off - there are still numerous ways to do it - if you are intelligent and lucky for a while.

THefts at dealerships are far more common than is published. Out of trust situations with Floorplans alone happen all the time.

Only if a moron is running the show.

During the financial crisis (i.e. 2008/09/10) all sorts of (seemingly successful) auto and boat dealers in the NY area went bankrupt because when the liquidity dried up for a month as a result of the crisis, those who were perpetuating floor-planning games (fraud?) basically got left standing the game of floor-planning musical chairs.

Several notable dealer groups went out of business and it wasn't til they were gone that people said - 'thank god they blew up - they sucked'.

Curiously of all, in the Hamptons, a prominent local business person owned BMW of the Hamptons and several 'up-island' stores of other makes. In a highly symbolic development, soon after the financial bust "BMW of the Hamptons" closed around 2009 - very ironic.

However, maybe a year after, a local financial entrepreneur (with business experience but no real car retailing experience) bought the pieces and reopened. He has done a great job and has expanded and now owns Porsche of the Hamptons, Audi of the Hamptons, Mini of the Hamptons and I think the Jeep and Ford stores too. He has made major improvements and has run a great business for the past 8 years since he launched. Its called Six Sigma Auto Group and they run a tight ship.

Maybe Champion needs to turn over to new ownership as well? Its shameful that this happened (in Miami of all places - go figure :-) )and expensive for the business owner.

Champion Porsche... bankrupt within 3 months of the 2008 financial crisis.. now this, when do they pull the franchise... oh.. shit I forgot, the biggest Porsche dealer in the nation, so the dealer gets away with gross mismanagement... or were they in on it?
TERMINATE the Franchise... like Porsche NA. would any other dealer... PCNA, hypocrites and liars... nothing fair about how Porsche runs their business and that shows as they continue to hide the real knowledge of the Diesel issues.
Porsche is a corrupt company chasing sales at all costs...

Well Porsche NA is really just VWAG and well...

How did this happen without management knowing anything? Much has changed since Don Skuta was the GM there as I bought many cars from them years ago including a Carrera GT and a few 996tt.

Hard to believe they went BK with those prices as they didn't discount shit even to big, repeat customers ($15G Tubi exhausts, Motorsport Rims etc) but the showroom was massive and likely the carrying costs.

Because it's a Porsche, this type of shit will never fly at Ferrari.

(How's that for a Friday afternoon troll??)