Consumer Attorneys

A fraudulent car sales executive has been jailed for 15 months after stealing thousands of pounds from his garage employers and customers, including his mother.

Desperate Stuart Coyne stole GBP14,000 from Truscotts of Launceston, the main Peugeot dealers for East Cornwall, as he came under..

Jan. 25–Under a big tent, some deals on vehicles can be found — but it pays to become a savvy shopper, say car dealers and consumer advocates.

Tent sales often involve several dealers who get together and set up a temporary sales site away from their dealerships. Their goal is to sell a lot of vehicles in a day or two.

Someone determined to buy at a tent sale is best armed with a list of questions, said Michael Lindsey, a San Diego attorney who specializes in lemon law and dealer fraud.

He said shoppers should ask where a vehicle came from, whether it has been in any accidents, what its warranty history is and whether it was a rental car.

“You’ve got to ask a lot of questions,”…

Feb. 22–COLUMBUS - The Ohio Senate is expected to act today on a bill cracking down on mortgage brokers, loan officers, and nonbank lenders who trick customers into loans they can’t afford.

But critics argue that the bill waters down protections for all consumers even as it applies Ohio’s Consumer Sales Protection Act to the home mortgage industry.

“[Senate Bill 185] would certainly open the courthouse doors to…

ESCONDIDO, Calif. — An Escondido auto dealer is in custody after being arrested and charged with fraud, 10News reported.

Douglas Harding operated Autopia Auto Sales and Leasing on West Mission Avenue.

Harding is charged with 38 counts of fraud, including not

paying off trade-ins and writing bad checks, authorities said.

The Department of Motor Vehicles began investigating Harding last year after receiving 30 complaints.

Investigators said more than 140 vehicles were involved and Harding could face up to 20 years in prison.

There are some dangerous pitfalls to getting involved with auto dealers, but if a credit union is savvy and careful, the advantages of an indirect lending program are well worth it, according to one speaker at the National Association of Community Credit Unions’ Annual Meeting.

“There are a lot of great opportunities to be found in indirect lending,” said Ron McDaniel, CEO of Point Mugu FCU, Oxnard, Calif., which previously managed its own indirect lending program but now now also works with CU Direct Lending (CUDL). “But you don’t want to jump in blind.”

Where The Opportunities Lie

Those opportunities include more loans, new members, better asset/liability management, diversity of the loan portfolio and even finding a community service partner in those auto dealerships the CU teams up with for indirect lending.

“You will be very surprised-and pleasantly so-if you give the dealers the opportunity to sign up members for you,” McDaniel noted. “And working with the dealers on community service efforts can be a big…

Experian protects dealers and consumers against hidden vehicle conditions

SCHAUMBURG, Ill., Oct. 23 /PRNewswire/ —

Experian(R) Automotive today announced a strategic partnership with DriveChicago.com, Chicago’s most comprehensive, online resource for researching and purchasing new and used cars. This partnership allows automotive dealers and consumers access to Experian’s Auto History(SM) and free Auto Lemon reports online at www.drivechicago.com .

Auto History reports are powered by Experian’s National Vehicle Database, one of the world’s 10 largest databases. The report information protects dealers and consumers by providing information about title and odometer fraud, lemon cars, salvage vehicles and other hidden conditions affecting…

TOKYO - Mazda Motor Corp. will begin assembling Premacy minivans in China in June with a local partner, making it the first Japanese automaker to produce a minivan there. Mazda, owned 33.4 percent by Ford Motor Co., said it will build 20,000 Premacys a year in conjunction with First Auto Works Hainan.

Infiniti recalls SUVs…

AKRON, Ohio–A California managing general agency and the insurer it represents are facing civil bankruptcy fraud charges, the latest twist in a saga that began with a fatal auto accident on a nearly deserted California highway in 1996.

The bankruptcy trustee for Irvine, Calif.-based API Insurance Services Inc. filed the fraud lawsuit last month against an alleged API successor corporation, Carousel Insurance Services Inc., and Guaranty National Insurance Co. of Connecticut, a unit of Royal & SunAlliance Insurance Group P.L.C. for which Carousel manages an auto dealer insurance program.

The trustee alleges that API’s operators put the MGA in bankruptcy to defraud creditors-including the surviving driver in the 1996 accident, who is suing the MGA-and that they set up a series of successor corporations to carry on the MGA’s business with Englewood, Colo.-based Guaranty National.

API principals “engineered the demise of the debtor corporation for personal advantage, namely to enable (them) to avoid their obligations to creditors and emerge with newly

formed corporations,” the trustee’s complaint charges.

None of the defendants has yet answered the fraud complaint.

Dennis M. Smith, a principal of API, referred questions to Carousel President Christopher Mercer, who denied the charges. “We don’t think there is any basis to them,” Mr. Mercer said.

Guaranty National officials did not respond to calls seeking comment.

API, Carousel and Guaranty National, meanwhile, are facing the lawsuit filed by Charles Stevens, the driver who caused the 1996 wreck. Mr. Stevens charges, among other things, that API was never licensed by the California Insurance Department and that its auto physical damage program represented an unfair business practice for which it should be…

WASHINGTON - Dealers’ finance and insurance departments are expected to face intense legal scrutiny because of well-publicized crackdowns on illegal payment packing in Washington state and California.

State attorneys general are so fired up about illegal payment packing - quoting inflated monthly payments to unknowing finance customers - at car dealerships that the National Association of Attorneys General issued a resolution…

A conflict is heating up in Pennsylvania, where a high-profile lawyer who specializes in lemon law cases has filed an odometer fraud suit against an Ephrata dealership that sued him earlier for alleged racketeering and misrepresentation.

The latest move is a suit in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia filed by Craig Kimmel, of Ambler, on behalf of Shawn Mosley. The suit claims Reinhart Ford sold Mosley a 1996 Ford Taurus with 39,151 miles on the odometer. Mosley said he later learned the actual mileage was 104,755.

Kimmel is the defendant in Reinhart Ford’s suit.

Reinhart Ford asserts that the rollback occurred before it acquired the car from…

For credit unions that don’t offer indirect lending for new vehicles, Murray Halperin has this message: “Good luck in the new car business.”

With 40% of auto dealers already in some type of relationship with providers of alternative financing products, CUs need to get connected in order to compete, he said, acknowledging he has a bias in the matter. Halperin is vice president-sales and marketing for Payment Advantage in Sarasota, Fla., which have been offering indirect lending services to several hundred credit unions since 1992.

“We offer a balloon note type product as a turnkey approach,” he said. “All the lender has to do is offer the loan.”

Whichever loan product or relationship credit unions enter into, Halperin was one of several experts who told The Credit Union Journal the most important thing is that credit unions get over being gun shy about indirect lending. Halperin noted, for instance, that technology has allowed the financing arms of the major manufacturers, including GM, Daimler/Chrysler and Ford, to provide dealers with instant online approval for car shoppers. Credit unions looking to remain competitive have little choice, he suggested, and whether they choose to outsource to businesses such as Payment Advantage or manage the service in- house, many in the industry agree that it’s a good way to tap into a market that they otherwise couldn’ touch.

Getting The Business

“More than half of the auto business that we get comes through the dealerships,” said Richard Warren, VP-lending at Commonwealth Credit Union, Frankfort, Ky. “If you don’t have that relationship, you’re…

A Steelton, PA man filed suit today against Ephrata, PA-based Reinhart Ford for odometer fraud. Shawn Mosley thought he was getting a great deal when he purchased a 1996 Ford Taurus with 39,151 miles on the odometer. It wasn’t until Mosley received a letter from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that he realized he had been taken for a ride.

The letter revealed the correct odometer reading was 104,755 miles. Further research indicated that the car had been involved in an accident in Massachusetts and…

Forget Disneyworld. The real excitement in Orlando, Fla., this fall likely will be in a federal courtroom, where Carmel native James T. O’Neal Jr. is scheduled to stand trial on charges he swindled millions of dollars from the rich and famous, including high-profile Indianapolis businesspeople.

A federal grand jury indicted O’Neal a year ago on 82 felony counts of money laundering, mail fraud and filing false tax returns. If the 12-person jury finds the 60-year-old Orlando resident guilty, he could face up to 769 years in prison and a fine of $25 million.

The trial begins Oct. 6 and is scheduled to last at least six weeks. In that span, jurors likely will hear testimony…

A car dealership that went out of business earlier this year has left dozens of consumers stuck in a bind without titles and liens on traded-in vehicles unpaid.

Vision Automotive Group in Randolph County closed shop abruptly in October and filed for bankruptcy after the company’s owner, Thomas Hanna Jr., revealed his company was millions of dollars in debt.

As a result, 58 customers allege liens on their trade-in cars were never paid off, according to Steve Dale, assistant to the commissioner of the Department of Motor Vehicles. Another 30 customers were left owning cars that were never properly titled, he said.

Now several of Vision’s customers are suing the banks that underwrote the dealership under the West Virginia Consumer Credit and Protection Act. The suit alleges that since the banks underwrote the loans entered into by customers and Vision, the banks are partially responsible for paying off the liens and taxes Vision left behind.

“There are 21 people in the situation where they have two loans and no car,” said Phillip Isner, an attorney representing 11 former Vision customers. “There are an additional 20 people who still don’t have the proper title on their new car. So they are left not being able to drive it. With just our clients, you are looking at $200,000 to $300,000 that Vision received.”

Anita and David Jones are clients of Isner’s. According to their lawsuit, Anita Jones went to Vision in August to trade in a 2005 Ford Focus for a 2005 Nissan Altima. Through the dealership, Jones received a loan from PNC Bank to pay for the new car, and Vision agreed to pay off Anita Jones’ loan on the Focus from Ford Motor Credit, as well as any taxes, title work and fees.

Ford Motor Credit called the Joneses in September and told them the lien was not paid. The Joneses went to the dealership on Sept. 30 to find out what was going on. The dealership told them sent a check to Ford the day before, the lawsuit said.

But when the Joneses checked with Ford Motor Credit on Oct. 4, they were told the check had been made out incorrectly and could not be accepted. Anita Jones called Vision and told the company to immediately transfer money to Ford Motor Credit, which was threatening to report the Joneses’ lapsed payments to credit reporting agencies. Vision employees told Anita Jones the dealership could not electronically transfer the money but would cut a check and overnight it, the lawsuit said.

The next day, on Oct. 5, Vision filed for bankruptcy and locked the dealership’s doors. Soon after, state inspectors with the DMV went to the dealership, pulled its business license and removed all of the temporary plates.

Isner said the Joneses and his other clients were injured by Vision’s practices through no fault of their own and should not be held responsible for paying off both the car they traded-in in good faith and the new vehicle they purchased.

“The moment our clients signed a contract with Vision, they signed contracts with the banks that underwrote Vision’s loans. We believe that if a bank like PNC has as much right to collect money on a car lien as Vision, so therefore they have the same responsibility to pay it off,” Isner said.

Since Vision is in the midst of bankruptcy, the customers who allege they were wronged by the dealership must wait for that procedure to be wrapped up. A bankruptcy judge in Clarksburg is currently going through a list of creditors Vision owes money too. Banks and businesses with secured debt will be paid off first. Customers’ liens would be paid off after that if any money is remaining, Isner said.

The dealership has total debts somewhere between $1 million and $10 million.

“We don’t think the initial list of creditors compiled by the bankruptcy judge was comprehensive,” Isner said. “Some of our clients weren’t on the list.”

Dale said most of Vision’s customers have been taken care of in the weeks since the business closed and Hanna filed for bankruptcy.

“State code has a special provision to help people in this situation,” he said. “The state has a dealer recovery fund to help pay off unpaid liens, and some people whose cars weren’t titled properly have been given extended temporary tags.”

But the fallout has a cost.

“The state is out about $39,000 in taxes it could have collected and about $205,000 in unpaid liens,” Dale said.

This is the second time this year a car dealership has closed abruptly, leaving consumers in a pinch. In April, the state shut down St. Marys Ford-Mercury after a number of questions popped up regarding the dealership and its owner, Sherman “Bret” Dils IV.

Dils is accused of running a million-dollar scam during the past year that affected as many as 300 people and businesses. Law enforcement officials and court records allege Dils used bad checks to buy cars to resell at his dealership from dealers in 13 other states. Dils also is accused of offering to pay off liens on cars customer traded in and then never making the payments.

Dils was arrested in June and spent some time in jail. According to Dale and several others familiar with the incident, most of the consumers received some sort of restitution to cover the money they lost in the transaction.

However, U.S. postal inspectors still are investigating the Dils case. Inspector Ken Gournic said his office has been in touch with hundreds of people.

“It’s part of an ongoing process,” Gournic said.

Dale said the St. Marys Ford case and what is going on with Vision appear to be similar, but they are very different.

“In the Dils case, there appeared to be a lot of fraud,” he said. “He wrote bad checks and planned to pay off loans with money from customers coming in. In the Vision case, it’s just a company going bankrupt.”

But to Isner, who actually was one of the consumers affected in the St. Marys Ford case, the problems in Elkins seem a little too familiar.

“They are eerily similar,” he said. “The difference with Vision is it’s not being treated as criminal. The prosecutor’s office isn’t getting involved. The police aren’t getting involved.

“Several of Vision’s victims attempted to file criminal complaints, but so far those complaints have been refused. Prosecutors and law enforcement say this isn’t a criminal case. They say it’s a civil matter. But both Vision and St. Marys Ford left people struggling with two car payments and no cars.”

More : wowktv.com

An elaborate scam has left an Auckland couple nearly $130,000 poorer and a luxury car sales company has been dragged into the mess.

The man responsible has been named by Winston Peters as Isaac Jago, an Iraqi who was a former member of Saddam Hussein’s elite palace guard.

Haider Jasim and Dhuha Haji say Jago told them he was a car dealer and he would help them buy their dream car - a luxury Mercedes from Coutts Cars in Auckland’s Newmarket.

Jago allegedly said he was acting as an agent for Coutts Cars, and he and the couple agreed on a price of $129,000.

“I asked for the original contract of the car itself, plus I asked for a receipt for the cheque,” says Haider Jasim.

He received a contract and receipt from Coutt’s on their stationery. But Jago did not give the cheque to Coutt’s Cars, instead he opened his own bank account in the name of Coutts Car Services.

The couple never got the car, and two days later the money was gone.

Last Sunday, Jago disappeared from his flat in Manukau. His landlord believes he has gone to Wellington.

Coutts Cars would not talk to One News about this deal, or why Jago ended up with their documents.

There is nothing to suggest Coutts knew about the scam, but their paperwork was used by Jago to steal the $129,000 paid for the Mercedes.

Because Jago has disappeared, Dhuha Haji believes Coutts Cars should pay up.

“I want to take the receipt to them and say I have a receipt in my name, it’s a legal receipt, give me my cheque back,” says Dhuja.

Jago is already before the courts on fraud charges and he is due to appear again in a fortnight.

The Iraqi refugee, who has been in New Zealand for five years, has been named by Winston Peters as a former member of Saddam Hussein’s elite palace guard.

Haider and Dhuha say Jago should be sent out of the country - they have hired private detectives Auckland Investigations to track him down.

“He is not a NZ citizen, he’s not having a NZ passport, he comes with false document to the country, isn’t it enough for the government to kick such a bad guy out of the country?” Haider asks.

The Immigration Service will not commit to investigating Jago, but say if they did they would have to wait until he has been through the courts. A decision to deport a refugee depends on the seriousness of their crime.

More : tvnz.co.nz

A car owner agonised by frequent snags in his new car finally received succour when a consumer forum ordered the car dealer and manufacturer to take the vehicle back and refund the entire amount he paid at the time of purchase.

Consumer Disputes Redressal Forum (North) has ordered a refund of Rs 2.71 lakh to Jaswant Singh Juneja, a resident of Mukherjee Nagar. The forum ordered that Juneja, who bought the new car in February 2002 from the dealer, be paid a compensation of Rs 50,000. Forum president K K Chopra ordered the monetary relief “on account of mental agony, harassment caused to the complainant by committing a fraud upon him and indulging in unfair trade practice.”

The complainant alleged while the dealer— Malwa Automobiles Pvt Ltd, formerly in Gujrawalan Town, claimed it was a 2002 model car, it actually turned out to be manufactured in 2000. Juneja said that the vehicle developed problems immediately after he bought it in 2002.

“It is a clear case of unfair trade practice, deceit and fraud. This transaction exposes the working of car manufacturing companies and their dealers and the manner in which the innocent customer is cheated,” Chopra said in the order.

The car manufacturing company, which was also made a respondent by the complaint, admitted that the car was manufactured in the year 2000. The dealer, however, claimed the car was sent to him by the manufacturer in January 2002. To eliminate the possibility of such unfair trade practice, the forum ordered, henceforth, the opposite parties will fix a plate beneath the bonnet of every car giving the year of manufacture.

More : timesofindia.indiatimes.com

Clarett estimated that more than $6,000 worth of clothing, cash and stereo and electronic equipment was taken from the car parked on campus. Athletic director Andy Geiger said Clarett was test-driving the car.

Clarett filed his report with campus police April 18, and university spokeswoman Elizabeth Conlisk said Friday the school will look into the matter.

Clarett’s lawyer, Scott Schiff, has said many of the expensive items identified in the report did not belong to Clarett but to the vehicle owner, a car dealer. He said Clarett admits inflating the value of the items, adding the player never filed an insurance claim.

Steve McIntosh of the Columbus city prosecutor’s office said the city wouldn’t pursue charges unless an insurance company or police filed a complaint. He said no complaint about Clarett had been received.

Falsification of a police report is a misdemeanor. A person who filed a false report generally would not be charged for the offense unless it was connected to a more serious crime, such as insurance fraud, he said.

Geiger and coach Jim Tressel said Wednesday that Clarett will be held out of preseason football practice until the matter is resolved because of extensive media coverage.

Despite injuries last season, Clarett set school freshman records with 1,237 yards rushing and 16 touchdowns. The defending champion Buckeyes open Aug. 30 at home against Washington.

The university also is investigating athletes’ academic performance. The inquiry started after a New York Times story said Clarett and other players received extra help.

More : sports.espn.go.com

A former Long Island car dealer who admitted bilking the General Motors Corporation out of $422 million in one of the largest frauds in American corporate history was sentenced yesterday to five years in prison.

John M. McNamara, 56, had not spent a day in jail since he pleaded guilty in 1992 to swindling G.M. by borrowing billions of dollars from it for nonexistent vans. The delay in sentencing was the result of his agreement to help Federal prosecutors uncover political corruption on Long Island, but his testimony in several bribery cases failed to secure any convictions.

Nonetheless, Judge Edward R. Korman of Federal District Court in Brooklyn granted the Government’s request for leniency, departing from sentencing guidelines that called for 9 to 11 years in prison.

Mr. McNamara’s five-year sentence, which he will begin serving on Oct. 1, is to be followed by three years’ supervised release. He was also ordered to repay General Motors more than $412 million in outstanding loans within three years of his release. General Motors has already recovered $13 million from the sale of cars that were on Mr. McNamara’s lots and the sale of dealership properties. It claims Mr. McNamara actually took $425 million, $3 million more than he has admitted to.

In sentencing Mr. McNamara, the judge said, ”I always believe that, based on my own experience as a U.S. attorney, people who cooperate with the Government are vital to the success of law enforcement against those who have committed crimes.”

The agreement with prosecutors allowed Mr. McNamara to keep $1.8 million in assets and start a new company, even though he owes his creditors hundreds of millions of dollars. Once a ubiquitous presence in Port Jefferson, his hometown, where he was known for his extensive land holdings and his gifts to local charities, Mr. McNamara became reclusive after his guilty plea. But he continued to live in the area, in a rambling white house with an indoor pool.

In the prosecution’s request for leniency, Loretta E. Lynch, an assistant United States attorney, wrote that Mr. McNamara’s cooperation had been fruitful, providing ‘’substantial assistance in a number of important prosecutions within the Eastern District of New York.”

”He has provided important substantive information about the nature and the scope of public corruption on Long Island,” the prosecutor wrote. ”The resulting trials, despite their verdicts, have increased public exposure to and knowledge of the inner workings of local government.”

But Robert Gottlieb, a criminal defense lawyer who ran unsuccessfully for district attorney in Suffolk County in 1989, said yesterday that the Government had had ”no choice but to make this deal with the devil.”

”What was somewhat surprising, even today,” Mr. Gottlieb added, ”is the extent to which he has been able to profit by his activities, and that certainly hurt the Government. I don’t think there’s any question that they are embarrassed.”

”This is a case where the Government was willing to make an extraordinary deal with a con man in the hopes of obtaining convictions in political corruption cases and they obviously failed to do that.”

The leniency request was challenged by the General Motors Acceptance Corporation, the financial arm of the auto maker, which urged the judge to impose a ‘’substantial prison sentence.”

A lawyer for General Motors, Charles E. Brown, said yesterday that Mr. McNamara deserved at least the sentence he had received.

”Mr. McNamara is an admitted criminal who took advantage of individuals and associates through deceit and theft,” Mr. Brown said. ”He abused the bond of personal trust he developed.”

A G.M.A.C. spokesman in Detroit, Terry Sullivan, said the auto maker had filed a civil lawsuit this week against Mr. McNamara that seeks up to $1.2 billion in restitution and damages.

In court testimony, Mr. McNamara admitted that over the course of eight years, he had obtained $6.2 billion in loans from G.M.A.C. for vans that did not exist. The fraud was discovered by G.M.A.C. auditors, who realized that his claims of shipping thousands of vehicles overseas per month were false.

More : query.nytimes.com

Dealer advertisements for new, used and leased automobiles have become so deceptive that dealers themselves can’t live with them anymore.

Dealer advertisements for new, used and leased automobiles have become so deceptive that dealers themselves can’t live with them anymore.

”The bait and switch that is going on is absolutely awful,” said Marvin Suskin, a Scarsdale, N.Y., Ford dealer and a spokesman for the Greater New York Automobile Dealers Association. At the trade group’s behest, the New York State Attorney General recently issued enforcement guidelines, which describe dozens of practices that constitute false advertising under existing laws.

Starting Jan. 1, the Attorney General will enforce the statewide guidelines, with assistance from the New York trade association, which plans to monitor its members’ advertising. Taking Issue With States’ Role

Auto advertising by dealers has been riddled with deception for decades, trade and government officials agree. Federal regulators say state agencies are best equipped to deal with local advertising fraud. But Stephen J. Brobeck, the executive director of the Consumer Federation of America in Washington, said that since consumers rarely complain about advertising or sales practices, state agencies have generally done little, except to prosecute egregious offenders.

Officials in several states acknowledged dealers’ leadership in initiating the regulatory crackdown, but also defended the states’ role in enforcement. In Oregon, for example, Timothy Wood, the chief of the financial fraud section of the state’s Justice Department, said, ”I like to think that our enforcement activity brought the dealers to the bargaining table.”

The state adopted auto advertising guidelines last year after dealers requested assistance. 20 States Regulate Ads

The New York guidelines are the newest and possibly the most stringent in the nation, but they have much in common with new or revised rules or regulations in Colorado, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Wisconsin. Dealer associations in Virgina and Illinois are seeking legislation or new guidelines.

In all, 20 states have some form of regulation on auto advertising, and at its December meeting in Hawaii, the National Association of Attorneys General are expected to approve model guidelines and recommend that all states adopt them.

New York’s guidelines primarily prohibit advertising prices that do not include all mandatory charges, which can amount to thousands of dollars. Only taxes and registration fees can be excluded from advertised prices. The guidelines also prohibit a grab bag of tricks that include using misleading illustrations or using footnotes that contradict or confuse the principal message of the ad.

Dealers are specifically cautioned against promising ”guaranteed lowest prices” unless they can prove it, and they cannot offer seemingly generous trade-in allowances for any car in any condition when, in fact, they tack on the amount of the trade-in allowance to the price of the new car.

”The ads are absolutely frustrating, and the salesmen won’t deal with you on the phone,” said David B. Newman, a Manhattan lawyer who tired of shopping for a Mazda RX-7 this fall. ”I am so disgusted I may wait until the next model year.”

Reputable dealers acknowledge the problem. ”The biggest overall abuse was that the consumer would see an advertisement for a car, but when he walked into the dealership, he could almost never get that car at that price,” said Mark Schienberg, the executive vice president of the Greater New York Automobile Dealers Association, which represents 475 of the 481 new-car dealers in New York City and Westchester County and on Long Island. This is the third-largest market in the nation, with about $9 billion a year in new-car sales.

Mr. Schienberg said the majority of dealers, many of whom do not advertise, were honest, but he added, ”Clearly, a majority of the ones that advertise, advertise falsely.”

More : query.nytimes.com

Internet companies that sell cars directly to consumers are encountering stiff opposition from auto dealers, who are using their influence in state legislatures and with state regulators to protect their businesses.

Car dealers, meeting here at their annual convention, are worried that they are being undercut or bypassed entirely by the new services. They are also afraid that automakers might sell cars on the Internet themselves or through the new Internet services. So the dealers have begun pushing restrictive laws through state legislatures to prevent this and have encouraged state regulators to crack down.

But consumer advocates say that extra competition would be good for customers. Indeed, state regulators say the only complaints they have been receiving about the services have been from dealers, not consumers. There is mixed evidence on whether consumers save money buying cars online.

Because of state franchise laws and manufacturers’ policies, Internet services must buy cars from dealers, not directly from manufacturers. Paying two markups, one for the dealer and one for the Internet company, is a burden on consumers that does not exist for many other forms of electronic commerce. This erodes price advantages Internet companies may have.

The federal government has left the regulation of auto retailing to the states, leaving potential gaps in regulation for deals that cross state lines, said state regulators from across the nation, who convened at a hotel near the dealers’ convention for meetings over the last four days.

”You could buy a car from a Mississippi dealer who has his Web site in Iowa and delivers a car in Idaho — who has jurisdiction?” asked T. Rex Green, Idaho’s supervisor of dealer investigations. ”I can’t justify to my taxpayers running all the way to Mississippi to chase someone.”

Dealers have already used their political muscle over the last 12 months to persuade lawmakers in nine states to tighten state franchise laws, making it virtually impossible for manufacturers to sell cars except through franchised dealers. Governor George W. Bush of Texas, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, signed the toughest such law in the nation last year, and the Texas Department of Transportation has become the nation’s leader in becoming stricter on Internet commerce involving cars. Legislatures in many more states are expected to consider legislation pushed by dealer groups this year, with one bill introduced last week in the Nebraska Legislature, which is nonpartisan and has only one house.

State motor vehicle regulators, acting partly at the prompting of dealers but also because of concern that businesses could use the Internet to commit fraud, have become alarmed that Internet companies may be violating longstanding laws in most states that require anyone selling a new car or truck to be licensed and have a franchise relationship with a manufacturer.

The regulators said that they believed the newest services, those which actually deliver cars to customers’ homes, might violate laws intended to protect dealers and consumers.

More : query.nytimes.com