Specialist cars of malton

[Sam]

£9.5m worth of debt. That’s lots.

[Bootsy]

£9.5m worth of debt. That’s lots.

Hell of a lot.

Nice to see his wife is starting up a company to keep in with Porsche marque

[hot66]

£9.5m worth of debt. That’s lots.

and look how many owners whos cars he sold that he hasn't paid

[911hillclimber]

Has he gone to jail?
Has he had to find that cash?
Have others been credited?
I suspect..
No, No, and No?

[Sam]

£9.5m worth of debt. That’s lots.

and look how many owners whos cars he sold that he hasn't paid

I recognise at least one of them, a private enthusiast, who he looks to have owed over £500k.

[inaglasshouse]

Horrible.
It looks like a lot of private individuals owed large sums (one or more proper car's worth). They make up the bulk of the creditors, in fact.
That "line of credit" looks massively out of proportion to the rest of the business, so it seems super likely to me that many /all of the cars were on SOR.
Selling something you don't own and deceiving the owner about the status is not a normal trading loss, and the courts do not treat it as such; it's little consolation to those out of pocket, but similar cases have led to fraud convictions and custodial sentences. Eg:
https://www.theboltonnews.co.uk/news/15 ... 00000-con/

Good luck to anyone caught up in this.

[sng45]

A friend of mine who lives abroad, had four 911's for sale with Specialist cars of Malton. In late October someone told me that they were on the edge of going bust, so I called my friend and told him that we needed to get his cars out of there. As he's not in the UK, I arranged for my transport guy to go and collect them on behalf of my friend , the only problem was that two of the cars weren't there and have never been found. My friend is down almost £200,000 ! I know of at least half a dozen people who are also out of pocket between £10,000 and £220,000.

I've known John Hawkins for thirty years and always felt that he was the sort of person, who, after shaking hands with him, you needed to check how many fingers you had left ! About eighteen months ago, he phoned me and offered me "a great opportunity to make a bit of cash ", he said that he could buy a 993 C4S for £60,000 but he was a bit short on funds, would I like to put in £30,000 to buy it ? he had a "guaranteed buyer at £75,000 and you'll get your money back plus £7,500 profit" , apparently the deal would be done in a couple of months. I was intrigued that a dealer who gave the impression of being affluent and successful would need bankrolling for thirty grand and also why would any car dealer be prepared to give away half of his profit ? I made an excuse that my funds were tied up and declined his offer, he subsequently called three people I know and offered a variation on the deal with different cars. All of them lost their money, one guy put in £60,000 to go halves on a 993 Turbo, which never actually existed, he lost his money and another £20,000 in legal fees.

I'm aware of a chap in the South of England who bought two cars from him, both belonged to other people who never received payment for them and to make matters worse, Hawkins had taken a loan against one of the cars in his own name, and convinced the buyer that "because of their reputation as Europe's premier Porsche Specialist" that he didn't need to do an HPi check as they'd already done it, but he'd mislaid the report, so one of the cars that the chap bought, belonged to someone else and also had finance against it in Hawkins name !

Hawkins must have got out of bed everyday for the last three years thinking "who am I going to shaft today ?"

He's a loathsome parasite who deserves everything which will one day surely happen to him. He's upset too many people for there not to be some form of retribution. I've been told by three people in the last ten days that Hawkins has apparently left the UK for Mexico. Good riddance to him.

[Bootsy]

Parasite is a good word for him.

[sng45]

£9.5m worth of debt. That’s lots.

I spoke to Hawkins on the phone last year and he was telling me how bad the market was, how Brexit had "screwed things up" and generally just how bad things were. He went on to say that at the peak of the market in 2015 - 2016 , he'd bought nine Porsche 918's for a million euros each and sold them on for a million pounds each, given the exchange rate at the time, he'd likely have made around £200,000 on each one, he'd also brokered a very low mileage 959 Sport which was stored in CARS Europe bonded facility and acting as the middleman had "made a hundred grand out of the deal " ( giving a minus of 10-20% for the bullshit factor, that's still quite a lot of money )

Therefore assuming that the ultimate debt figure is £9.5 million, ( that's without the "deals" mentioned above ) and assuming the market turned in mid 2016, dividing £9.5M over approx four years equates to £198,000 per month ( every month for four years ) on top of any legitimate business he's done ( a bit of a long shot I know !) where has the cash gone ? He must have money stashed away, maybe offshore, maybe in the UK. It would be difficult to blow fifty grand a week, every week and have nothing to show for it, a car dealership and a cafe in Malton don't cost that much to run. He's got some money, the unfortunate people who got shafted by him just need to find it !

Hopefully at some future date he'll be sharing a prison cell with Andrew Mearns and the bloke from "Yorkshire Classic Porsche" ( or whatever they're called this week) and they can create some form of crime central, mega den of deceit ,secondhand car dealership at least if they're all operating from the same premises they'll be easier to avoid !

[Sam]

Sean Lockyear went to prison:

https://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/ ... 000-fraud/

Two and a half years, so presumably out in a year or so. No money recovered. Suspected to be £1m.

During the London Riots folk got 6 months for stealing <£10 worth of stuff.

White collar / person crime is definitely the stuff to do.

[911hillclimber]

Surely the Law has some strength or Trading Standards etc have to bring these people to justice, for creditors to be satisfied (if not 100%).
It just reads that all this simply does not matter and there are bigger, better things for the Law enforcers to do with their tax payer salaries?

Seem very odd that this can simply drift along and when it's hot, pop over to Mexico for a while.

[964RS]

I make it just over £2.5m in customers cars sold and not paid for based of the creditors spreadsheets...

[inaglasshouse]

Although I think the really big total additionally includes the value of the cars owned by a US collector, as described in these legal docs
https://cases.justia.com/federal/distri ... 1517255434

Highlights of those docs:
Of these 17 vehicles, eight are embroiled in this litigation and include a Ferrari F40, Porsche 2.7 RS Touring, Lamborghini Miura, Porsche 2.7RS Lightweight, Porsche 2.7RS Touring, Porsche 959 Komfort, Ferrari 365 GT 2+2 and an Alfa Romeo Montreal.

which, allegedly, went missing as follows:
During the evening hours of October 12, 2015 — less than one day before a hearing was to take place before the High Court in the United Kingdom concerning the ownership of these cars — the eight referenced automobiles were removed from Specialist Cars’ warehouse facility

Serious money. Good luck to all involved.

[Ian Gunney]

Reading this thread makes me feel physically ill - I'll never know how some people sleep at night...

[gridgway]

it is absolutely astonishing, what a massive scale of fraud and dodgy dealings - beyond belief. How do you get to be such a person?

Mind you, on another note, I think the hatred of pistonheads in the matter is very strange. PH has a simple policy of no naming and shaming. If I ran a website forum, I'd do the same. It's got nothing to do with protecting bad businesses and people. Just a very straightforward way of dealing with the risk of defamation claims.