Someone Contacted Me About A Car I Sold To A Dealership Years Ago
Location: Missouri
I purchased a new used car from a dealership a few years ago and in the process traded in my old car. I gave the dealership the title, and signed everything over properly with no issues.
I was contacted this month by a random person via Facebook asking me if I had previously owned their vehicle, and they provided the correct make model and year. Apparently the dealership sold my car to an auction house which is pretty normal, but whoever bought the car at auction didn’t get the title, and then sold it to this person also without giving them the title.
They are now reaching out to me because they continue to receive tickets due to driving an uninsured vehicle (because they don’t have the title) and are asking me to somehow magically produce a title?
As far as I’m aware, my hands were washed of the old car once I signed ownership of it over to the dealership. It hasn’t been on my personal property tax list for years, and I doubt there is a way for me to get a title for the car.
Apparently a local cop gave this person my name as a previous owner of the car and that’s how they started harassing me for help.
Is there anything I should be worried about? I haven’t responded to any of the messages so far.
UPDATE:
I reached out to the car dealership first, and they were very helpful and let me know that they transferred the title over to the car auction company. They also had the ability to see who the auction company sold my car to. I took down all the information provided and then attempted to contact the police dept. that gave out my information to get some answers.
They were anything but helpful.
They didn’t give me any information about the officer that gave out my name/info, and basically told me a different officer would follow up with me before hanging up on me. (Gotta love small town MO police 🙃)
I actually did end up getting a call from an officer who was much more interested in what happened, he let me know that he would look into why my information was given out, and I let him know that I was willing to share the car information I had received with an officer, but not this stranger who keeps trying to contact me. He basically told me to block the stranger, and that I was not on the hook for anything happening to the car currently.
I feel like I’ve already done way more work than necessary, and while I’d like to file a report on the officer that shared my information, I currently have zero idea who I would be reporting and the station is too far away to really justify going there and doing anything.
I truly appreciate all the advice and comments, they made me feel way more confident that I was doing the right thing not responding to this stranger.