10 day demand letter help

[RiverRat1]

Yep.

So it's your opinion a vehicle (or any item) can not be stolen after two parties make an agreement, even 6 months or a year after that agreement is over?

This would be one heck of a fuzzy line.
I rent a guy my AR to hunt one night, can he just take it home and it's a civil matter?

Or can I keep a rental car without fear of it being reported stolen?

[tvc184]

So it's your opinion a vehicle (or any item) can not be stolen after two parties make an agreement, even 6 months or a year after that agreement is over?

This would be one heck of a fuzzy line.
I rent a guy my AR to hunt one night, can he just take it home and it's a civil matter?

Or can I keep a rental car without fear of it being reported stolen?

It is criminal by Texas law to keep a rented vehicle or item after a certain number of days after the contract time has expired and after the appropriate demand letters have been sent and the prescribed number of days have passed since received.

In criminal investigations a district attorney can accept or refuse a case at discretion. I can guarantee that when I was in detectives, I sent cases to the DA for review that I knew were crimes and I had the evidence to prove it. The DA can and does refuse cases for any reason or no reason other than cases stacking up. There are many police officers in this forum and any that has been in position to send a case to the DA for review can probably put their name on this comment instead of mine and it would still be correct. It is the nature of the job.

The police don’t file charges in court and they don’t accept cases for trial. The police investigate (speak to witnesses, take photographs/fingerprints/etc.) and send the paperwork to the DA who can can accept the case, refuse it outright or send it back for further investigation.

In a case like this (which I have limited experience in), who is the responsible party? Is it the rental company who leased the vehicle with intent to rent it out or the person it was rented to?

It is easy when you rent a car from a company and refuse to return it.

But what happens when you are running a legitimate business (not saying this company is ethical) and you lease equipment to be rented out? You are leasing something legally and you as part of your business rent it out to individuals? A person you rented to (third party) is who kept the property longer than the contract or simply quit paying.

Not civilly but criminally who is responsible? You? You didn’t steal the item and you certainly can’t return it because you don’t have possession and may not know where the rented property is located.

You give the example of renting a rifle. That is strictly a two party deal. That isn’t the same in this case. In this case the property was leased with the knowledge of the owner that it would be rented to a third party.

In the end I don’t know if the rental company or agent is criminally responsible or if it is the third party who rented it or both. In my 6-ish years in investigations I didn’t deal with vehicle thefts. We had an auto theft task force investigator for that specialty.

I do know however that the DA has returned some of my cases with a comment like, suggest that this is handled in civil court. They aren’t saying that it isn’t a crime but pretty much saying…. sorry but we aren’t interested in tying up lawyers and courts for this. There is another remedy and we sugest that the victim use it.

As I mentioned earlier, the police don’t file charges in court. They submit investigations to the DA. In the end, criminal cases are at the discretion of the DA.

[Man]

They just took down the Vakay advertisment sign near my house this morning!

[Burnadell]

So it's your opinion a vehicle (or any item) can not be stolen after two parties make an agreement, even 6 months or a year after that agreement is over?

This would be one heck of a fuzzy line.
I rent a guy my AR to hunt one night, can he just take it home and it's a civil matter?

Or can I keep a rental car without fear of it being reported stolen?

All I can tell you is that when I was a banker (been out of banking almost 30 years, so the laws could have changed), it was not a criminal act for a person to borrow money to finance a vehicle, equipment, etc., stop paying, then skip town with the vehicle or equipment. That used to really tick me off, and in my mind it was stealing, especially when they never made the first payment...but our attorneys always said that when a contract was violated, that it was a civil matter unless the loan application contained fraudulent information.

TVC84 is very knowledgeable about the law in Texas, and I tend to rely on his posts and judgement as being correct.

In this case, my take is that VAKAY, who contracted with OP, did not initially intend to screw him but rather got into financial trouble for whatever reason and simply tried to use some of the funds owed to OP for their own use until they got caught up, then it snowballed, and they don't have the money to pay him. Desperate people, even when normally honest, will do desperate things to protect themselves.

Civil matter.

[CEO]

So it's your opinion a vehicle (or any item) can not be stolen after two parties make an agreement, even 6 months or a year after that agreement is over?

This would be one heck of a fuzzy line.
I rent a guy my AR to hunt one night, can he just take it home and it's a civil matter?

Or can I keep a rental car without fear of it being reported stolen?

One of our customers rented a welder from us. We were doing a rent to own deal with him. Nothing with a ton of paperwork, just giving him a certain amount of money per month towards purchase if he decided to buy it. After a few months he goes silent. We figure out where he is in West Texas and the police say they'll go talk to him. He tells them it's a rent to own and the cops say thanks and leave. Tell us there's nothing they can do. No different than a finance company.

We sent a demand letter on a different piece of equipment a few weeks ago. Regular rental. Guy paid for it for his contractor for a week. They kept it another week, we charges him, he disputed it, CC company took the money back, contractor took off with the machine. We'll file it as stolen but apparently there are all kinds of people after this guy from what we were told when the demand letter got to the address on his license. Don't expect anything to happen to him or get the machine back.

[C.Read]

It's Monday and the saga continues....really hope you got it back though.

[Johnny Dangerr]

Is he in a jail somewhere???

[BlackHogDown]

Just caught up on last couple pages and was hoping for a positive update. Fingers crossed for TT.

[Greenheadless]

[Texastaxi]

This is dragging out way longer than I ever thought it would.

Short answer ... RV is still on their lot. The driver that we had for Friday couldn't get there. Tina had given Ron a price to buy the trailer; he said he still wanted to buy it. The price was average NADA retail. We both agreed that without knowing the condition of the trailer, it was a calculated risk that we were willing to take to avoid who knows how much repair. Ron came up with all the cash, minus $3,250 and asked if he gave us the $20k that he had, if we would give him another 30 days to come up with the rest.

We're in the process of writing up a contract to do all of this, and including the past due rental payments. Part of that is him agreeing that he's 5 months past due and not 2.

This is definitely not the way I expected this to play out, but at this point, not knowing how good or bad this thing is, I'm willing to gamble that I'll come out ahead by just selling it to him. We're in the process of getting everything in a contract and then picking up a cashier's check for the down payment/holding fee of $20k.

[OleTomTalker]

This is dragging out way longer than I ever thought it would.

Short answer ... RV is still on their lot. The driver that we had for Friday couldn't get there. Tina had given Ron a price to buy the trailer; he said he still wanted to buy it. The price was average NADA retail. We both agreed that without knowing the condition of the trailer, it was a calculated risk that we were willing to take to avoid who knows how much repair. Ron came up with all the cash, minus $3,250 and asked if he gave us the $20k that he had, if we would give him another 30 days to come up with the rest.

We're in the process of writing up a contract to do all of this, and including the past due rental payments. Part of that is him agreeing that he's 5 months past due and not 2.

This is definitely not the way I expected this to play out, but at this point, not knowing how good or bad this thing is, I'm willing to gamble that I'll come out ahead by just selling it to him. We're in the process of getting everything in a contract and then picking up a cashier's check for the down payment/holding fee of $20k.

sounds reasonable. Hope works out. $20k in itself is about $20k more than was thinking yall might get.

[Hoggslayer]

This is dragging out way longer than I ever thought it would.

Short answer ... RV is still on their lot. The driver that we had for Friday couldn't get there. Tina had given Ron a price to buy the trailer; he said he still wanted to buy it. The price was average NADA retail. We both agreed that without knowing the condition of the trailer, it was a calculated risk that we were willing to take to avoid who knows how much repair. Ron came up with all the cash, minus $3,250 and asked if he gave us the $20k that he had, if we would give him another 30 days to come up with the rest.

We're in the process of writing up a contract to do all of this, and including the past due rental payments. Part of that is him agreeing that he's 5 months past due and not 2.

This is definitely not the way I expected this to play out, but at this point, not knowing how good or bad this thing is, I'm willing to gamble that I'll come out ahead by just selling it to him. We're in the process of getting everything in a contract and then picking up a cashier's check for the down payment/holding fee of $20k.

Didn't you already have a contract with Ron where he failed to hold up his end of the deal?

The old saying "fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me" comes to mind.

[Texastaxi]

Didn't you already have a contract with Ron where he failed to hold up his end of the deal?

The old saying "fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me" comes to mind.

I hear ya, and I am kinda weary myself, BUT the guy from Yelp went to either get his trailer or payment to buy it, on Friday.

He got the payment!

[Stan R]

I would go get it and then sell and then let him to come get it.

I'm sure someone from here would be willing to help get if off that guys lot.

[ColinR]

sounds reasonable. Hope works out. $20k in itself is about $20k more than was thinking yall might get.

I agree 100%