Car wreck, the run-around, and investigating--(Extremely Long)

[tdarko]

First off during this whole process I made a few mistakes, I made these mistakes b/c of incidents that happened to me medically a few days prior (the reason I wasn't driving) and I wasn't thinking completely clearly and everything was a little hazy. I did the best I could and did alright, but I missed some key details. Here is the trip report, I need OOT's expert to non-expert advice:

Three days ago my gf was driving my car with me in the passenger seat down a road in New Haven, CT. All is well until I notice a Buick slowly creeping into our lane, I say my gf's name a couple times but she doesn't realize a car is about to hit us so I dive into the drivers seat and lay on the horn but the approaching car keeps coming and while still laying basically in my gf's lap I swerve the car as far left as I can which was impressive on my part I must say b/c I escaped out of this ordeal with very little damage. It turns out that when I swerved was right when the car bumped me and it lessened the impact and so there were just scratches down the side and one small dent, nothing too bad, his car looked like [censored], standard though since my vehicle is bigger than his.

I get out of the car, pissed, but this guy is so amicable it is hard to be mad at him. He is accompanied by his Chinese mail-order bride, who is way too tall for him. He says that he lives in China and that this is his brother's car and that since it was minor damage that he would rather not involve cops and insurance. My gf says no dice, go get your insurance. He kind of pleads a little bit but she isn't budging so he goes to the car and comes back and says that there isn't any in the car. I am in pain from a few days earlier and actually have a concussion (not from this wreck, from something else) so this is the last [censored] thing I want to be doing at the moment so I give in and tell him to give me his drivers license. I take his license and write down all of his information; dl#, address, etc. He gives me a phone number to call him as well. The plan is for me to go and get an estimate on my car and then have him send me the money to pay it, simple. I missed getting his damn license plate, you will why I needed this later.

I get the estimate today and it comes to $945.17. In this post I am going to actually use real names b/c I could give a rat's ass about anonymity. So it is now time to call John Lambert. I call the number he gives me which he says is the number to his brothers place where he is staying till' he goes back to China, this number rings and rings and nobody is there, the message picks up and it is a lady's voice but she doesn't leave a name, so I leave a message explaining that I am the guy from the wreck and that I got the estimate yada yada yada. I call all day and finally she picks up and says, "wrong number, sorry." Ugh.

I am at a baseball field and not around a computer so my gf goes online for me and starts to do some investigating, she searches every Lambert in New Haven which is a few and calls most of them to no avail. During her failure the wrong number lady calls me back and tells me that she just now listened to my message and wanted to make sure that I knew that she didn't know this Lambert character. She was a nice lady and said I should just go to the cops. Then I get a phone call from my gf with some crazy news, she calls one of the Lambert listings and asks for John Lambert and the guy laughs and says she has the wrong number, she almost hangs up when he tells her that "he lives in downtown New Haven." My gf says, "you know him?" He says, "yeah he's my brother, but I haven't seen him in 20 years...oh and his name isn't John it is Frank, everyone calls him John but his real name is Frank." My gf tells him about the accident and everything, the brother hasn't talked to him in ages and didn't have a working number to give us but new that he lived on Wooster Street, so my gf lookes it up and voila Frank [censored] Lambert on Wooster St.

Here is another wild part of this guys antics, as if he has done this before or something...his driver's license was a fake b/c the address on it doesn't match any of the Lambert's that we looked up and obviously he is lying b/c he lives here and not in China. So what good is dl# or any of his info if it's wrong? blah.

Soooooo, after I let this guy give me the run-around for a short while I have some questions on how to handle it. My immediate reaction was to drive to his house and beat $945.17 out of him, but that started an argument betweent my gf and I [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]. I am thinking maybe stake out the house, get the license plate number and go to the cops? Should I just call the guy and talk to him? Should I show up at his house, w/o forceful intention but just go there and get my damn money? My teammates, say they want to go over there and scare the money out of him but I dunno about that. Thoughts?

[beenben]

Cop time.

[Patrick del Poker Grande]

Word on the street is you're pretty good with one of these, no?

[milliondollaz]

scope it out, make sure it is him, call police, explain everything. fake drivers lisense, wrong phone number, he was in the wrong lane, you didn't call the cops cause of your concussion/girlfriend.

see what they say. the only negative is that you won't be able to threaten this frank joker, cause now the cops know your motive. but that might prevent you from being dumb and threatening him, which is a positive.

if it's not frank/john, keep looking i guess...

[bdohaney]

Call the cops directly. They don't need the plate #, the fact that he was driving with an illegal license and no insurance, gave you a fake number, etc should put him in some serious hot water. And, if that doesn't work, give him a week to come up with the now $2000 he owes you, or you will bust his kneecap.

[yasher]

I think 20 dudes with baseball bats would be pretty damn useful in extracting your money...

And a damn fine trip report. Better get it on video.

[tuq]

td,

The way you describe it makes it sound like a near head-on collision, or was he creeping up from behind?

Also,

[ QUOTE ]
He is accompanied by his Chinese mail-order bride, who is way too tall for him.

[/ QUOTE ]
I find it hilarious that you managed to sprinkle that sentence in.

The guy sounds like an assclown who is destined to give you more headaches if you don't menace him a bit. Plus it's been established just today in OOT that most PD's will do the bare minimum and probably won't be much help.

Good luck.

-- tuq

PS It took a lot of self control for me to not post the broken window/knife combo, but that may be a future option.

[tdarko]

PDPG- This guy isn't very menacing, now there are part of New Haven in which I would need more than a bat for protection to get my money back.

tuq- We were driving side by side, he was I guess switching lanes. Thankfully he wasn't swerving into the left lane from the right lane and was slowly moving into my lane, it seemed like it took forever to happen. To be honest, I have absolutely no [censored] clue what this guy was thinking when he was driving. Maybe he is narcoleptic?

[Artdogg]

I think you gotta try to confront him first, with some friends. If you arent able to do that you can call the cops, and if they dont care enough to help you could go to this philosophy...

[ QUOTE ]
give him a week to come up with the now $2000 he owes you, or you will bust his kneecap.

[/ QUOTE ]

Either way though, pieces of crap like this need to be punished more then the 900 dollars he owes.

[bdohaney]

Well, I think that the real key here is this guy is a perfect target for some well-placed and well-deserved extortion. He lied about a number of very important things, and is highly unlikely to go to the police and tell them, "I broke the law, driving with a false license, no insurance, and talked this guy into not calling you guys and then gave him a fake number to call me. Well, now he came to my house and told me that I owe him $2000 dollars or he is going to kneecap me." So, nevermind the $900, give yourself a reasonable amount of extra for your pain and suffering ($1100 sounded about right to me, you may wish to adjust that according to your own needs) and I think that he will be glad to pay it, to avoid losing his kneecap(s) or anal virginity (in jail, if you decided that blackmail was a better route than outright extortion.)