Shibazz
New Member
- Jurisdiction
- Pennsylvania
I' 23 years old, 2 years ago in 2015 i was working under a private car dealership, i had a PA salesperson license under that company, I worked on a commission basis, in the sense that id pay a fee per vehicle that i purchased to the owner of the dealership, then the profit made from the vehicle was mine. (the money used to purchase the vehicle was also mine.). Long story short I had a garage at my house and was repairing vehicles out of there, the dealership had no notary so i was forced to use the notary next door to the dealership which was two towns over from my shop, but a majority of the time people were interested in vehicles that were being worked on or serviced at the shop and I would just do the sale there and do the paper work at my local notary. I had paper work for every vehicle sold, one vehicle was sold had a brake line blow out and the purchaser of the vehicle contacted state police, there was nothing they could do about that specific vehicle but that's what caused them to investigate me. I was advertising these vehicles on the Facebook page for my garage. This caused them to charge me per vehicle, I was charged with 2 counts of tax fraud, 26 counts of deceptive business practices, 27 counts of false business practice, and 49 counts of unprofessional conduct/incompetency(2 of these were felonies btw)....They charged each half of the vehicles sold with false THEN deceptive, then charged all of them with unprofessional for good measure i assume. I was also looking at upwards of 56,000 in fines. 2017 out of the blue, Easter day these charges hit the newspaper, i wasn't notified by any magistrate, this is how i find out, i had already paid (long ago closer to the time of the incident) my lawyer for an arraignment between he, myself, rep from pa tax bureau, rep from dealer board and the prosecuting trooper. I got ROR bail then we awaited the preliminary, over the course the time my lawyer asked me for copies of all my documents, titles, bills of sales, etc. as if he was building a detailed case. As we continued to near the date of the preliminary he told me that he was seeking the help of another lawyer. Lets just say this lawyer he was seeking help from is renowned in my area for plea bargains, and i didn't feel right about the situation when he told me about this so i addressed it and told him i'd prefer not to take a plea deal i would rather present my facts. He then; 1 day before trial informed me he was going to attempt a plea deal, i stressed that i did not want to. Day of the preliminary comes and here he is and lawyer#2 who has already made a plea deal of 2 years ARD with 50 hours of community service, 1 year release will be granted for good behavior. I had never even heard of such a thing for selling vehicles. I didn't want to take it, but they told me i was being immature and i had to stop being so aggressive, that i run a high risk of going to jail over this and id be stupid not to take this deal. So reluctantly i took it, and still don't feel right about it to this day. I paid $2,000 to the attorneys for this, "we should have charged you more" they joked when i was attempting to tell them how shitty their plea deal sounded to me. is there anything i can even do now? also any advice on a better way i should've handled this would also be greatly appreciated, thanks.
