Crime & Punishment

News about scofflaws, hardened criminals and everyone in between

QOTD: Will the Car Hacking Ever Stop?

It feels like we've covered car hacking a lot over the past few years.

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QOTD: Can You Blame Self-Driving for Crashes?

This afternoon's story about a woman accused of killing two people while intoxicated behind the wheel of a Ford with BlueCruise is downright dystopian.

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Report: Drunk Driver Charged With Homicide, Defense Will Blame the Car

An intoxicated woman driving a Ford “Mustang” Mach-E, who struck and killed two people in Philadelphia last March, is being charged with homicide. However, the vehicle’s suite of advanced driving aids have muddled the case and are apparently being used as part of the defense. Meanwhile, the technology itself is being investigated by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) for presumed operational failures.

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QOTD: How Do We Fight the Speeding Surveillance State?

I am a firm believer that while excessive speeding is dangerous and bad, not all speeding is.

For example, driving 11 mph over the limit on the freeway in a well-maintained car when you're dead sober and paying complete attention isn't that dangerous. Driving 60 mph in a school zone is.

I also firmly believe that speeding enforcement is often more about revenue collection than safety.

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Driving Dystopia: Ford Patents Automated Speed Violation Detection System for Vehicles

Ford Motor Co. has filed a patent with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for a system that would effectively convert modern police vehicles into mobile surveillance platforms designed to autonomously track and tattle on speeders. However, the tech doesn't look as though it would have to be limited to the vehicles driven by law enforcement.

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Extended Warranty Company CarChex Facing Huge FTC Settlement for Deceptive Practices

Some extended auto warranty and service contract providers have earned a bad rap over the years for deceptive business practices and harassing potential customers. One of the most well-known names in the industry is now facing a significant fine for its deeds. CarShield has agreed to pay $10 million to the Federal Trade Commission over claims that it deceived customers with its advertising.

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Dirtbag English Car Dealer Gets Jail Time for Ripping People Off

While there are absolutely exceptions, the days of the super-sleazy used car dealer seem to be behind us here in the States. Anyone ripped off by one of them probably wishes we had laws like those in England, where a shady dealer recently got jail time for his actions.

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Toronto Police Recommend Letting Thieves Steal Your Car

While car crime has been up generally in recent years, some North American cities have seen staggering increases in automotive theft. Toronto estimates that it has endured a nearly 150-percent in automotive crime over the past six years and local authorities are rolling out a new tactic to cope with the situation — police have advised the public to just let thieves take their vehicle.

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FTC Launches “Combating Auto Retail Scams” Rule

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has announced the finalization of the new Combating Auto Retail Scams (CARS) rule designed to prevent auto dealers from utilizing bait-and-switch tactics and hidden junk fees. While these are technically illegal already, CARS is supposed to give the FTC more leeway in determining what constitutes fraud and serve as a warning to dealers that may be crossing the line.

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Government Auctions Dozens of Cars Seized From YouTuber

It’s easy to believe the hype you see on Instagram and YouTube is real, and younger audiences often hold the people on those channels and accounts up as role models. Of course, as it turns out, influencers can be pretty crappy people, just like anyone else. This auction for 32 cars seized from a YouTuber shows how far some people are willing to go to maintain their flashy on-camera lifestyles.

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U.K. Dealer Sells 'Death Trap' Twice, Faces Jail Time

The United States doesn't have a monopoly on shady car dealerships.

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Ohio Mom Pleads for Police to Lock Up Her Teen for Repeated Car Thefts

Thieves targeting older Hyundai and Kia models have gotten so brazen that some insurers have stopped issuing policies for the cars. Despite efforts to retrofit a solution for the cars’ missing immobilizer systems, the cars are still being stolen in crazy numbers. One mother in Columbus, Ohio, is fed up with her son’s thieving ways, begging police to lock him up for his crimes. 

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Oklahoma Teen Allegedly Defrauded a Car Dealership Out of Almost $100,000

Though car dealerships often get the short straw when it comes to customer trust, most are legitimate businesses that aren’t out to rip off unsuspecting customers. An Oklahoma teen recently flipped the script on that narrative and is accused of defrauding an Oklahoma City dealer out of almost $100,000.

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Philly Towing Company Busted for Running Catalytic Converter Theft Ring

Looking at the news, it’d be easy to think that catalytic converter theft is carried out by a wily group of bandits under cover of night, but that’s not always the case. A Philadelphia-based towing company is in hot water after almost a dozen people ran a theft ring that racked up millions in stolen catalytic converters. 

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Thieves Steal Toyota RAV4 by Hacking Into Its Headlights

It seems car thieves develop a new and annoying method for making off with people’s vehicles every week. The TikTok-inspired thefts have gotten so bad that some insurance companies won’t touch particular Hyundai and Kia models. We also learned of a new key fob method that could activate keys from inside owners’ homes. Ars Technica recently reported on an even sneakier new hacker-like threat that comes packed into a small Bluetooth speaker.

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You Should Probably Charge Your EV Before Using It As a Robbery Getaway Car

I’m guilty of complaining about EV charging infrastructure, but I’ve never been in a situation where charging times or lack of access ruined my day. That’s the exact opposite of the experience two thieves recently had in Georgia, as their stop to charge their Tesla Model X was their undoing. 

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Oscar Mayer Wienermobile Circumcised by Catalytic Converter Thieves

The Oscar Mayer Wienermobile is one of a handful of famous mascot vehicles roaming the highways, along with the Planters Nutmobile and the L.L. Bean Bootmobile. Though it looks outlandish, the Wienermobile is built using normal automotive parts underneath, which is how enterprising thieves in Las Vegas made off with the catalytic converter from one in a hotel parking lot. 

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Gubbmint Introduces Bill to Curb Catalytic Converter Theft

Hands up if you or someone you know has had a brush with catalytic converter theft. Packed with valuable metals, unsavory sorts have been helping themselves to this easily accessible part of a car’s exhaust system, often attacking it with a reciprocating saw and making away with the item in just a few seconds. Now, the government is (re)introducing a bill that may help curtail thefts.

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Insurance Companies Are Refusing to Cover Certain Hyundai and Kia Models

You’ve probably heard about the TikTok-inspired uptick in Hyundai and Kia thefts, where the lack of an immobilizer has given thieves an open invitation. Beyond the stress that your car could be stolen at any time, insurance companies now appear to be less willing to cover the vehicles. 

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QOTD: Taking Your Medicine

Just a bit ago, the local press fleet send me a present via the City of Chicago -- I flashed a speed camera at somewhere more than 6 mph but less than 10 mph over. Oddly, it's not the same camera that caused me to ask a QOTD about how y'all feel about these cameras -- it happened more than a week after I wrote that, and on a different stretch of the same road.

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Five Companies and Dealers on the Naughty List

Maybe it's a coincidence, or maybe we're just paying closer attention as we trawl for news -- or maybe it's that phenomenon where when you see a story on a given topic, you start seeing more.

Regardless, we've seen a ton of "dealership behaving badly" stories lately. As well as "companies behaving badly" stories. Even wrote a few.

So, here's a quick roundup of five dealers who might be seeing lumps of coal in their stockings this weekend.

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Dan O’Brien Kia Hit With $1.25m Judgement for Deceptive Practices

“There is no choice but for them to improve. They have to find a way to meet customer expectations.” Those are the words uttered by Steve Center, Chief Operating Officer of Kia America, at this year’s L.A. Auto Show in response to questions about the brand scoring dead last in a sales satisfaction survey about its dealerships. 


Well, it seems Dan O’Brien Kia of New Hampshire either didn’t get the memo or is hell-bent on becoming the poster child for Center’s ire. After all, being told to pay $1.25 million in a deceptive practices settlement are unlikely to ingratiate the place to their brand’s COO.

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Hertz Agrees to Pay $168 Million in False-Arrest Settlement

Hertz has decided to pay $168 million to settle 364 individual claims that the company falsely reported its own rental cars as stolen. Criticisms date back to 2015 but the issue became national news right around the time the company was also filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2020. Hertz has since maintained that any erroneous claims made against customers were the result of a faulty inventory system that’s since been fixed. However, the people that were wrongfully accused of the crime – some of which were held at gunpoint by police and even temporarily imprisoned for a felony offense they didn’t commit – have been seeking restitution in class-action suits.

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Activists Empty Tires on Dozens of SUVs in NYC

My grandmother used to tell me, “you can say almost anything you want as long as you say it respectfully.” That’s not entirely true for a bunch of reasons, but it can apply to specific situations. For instance, this group of climate “activists” deflating tires on SUVs in Brooklyn may have the right message, but delivering it through hundreds of flat tires is more likely to end in violence than any meaningful change.

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Hackers Use SiriusXM to Hack Into Several Automakers' Vehicles [UPDATED]

If something is connected to the internet, there’s a great chance someone will figure out how to hack into it. Cars are increasingly connected, leading to several stories of hackers accessing and breaking various automakers’ vehicle functions. One benevolent hacker took to Twitter to outline an interesting hack he and others were able to pull off on several automakers’ vehicles. 

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Want to Roll Back Miles on Your Used Lambo? Just Spend Some Money

We all know the scene in Ferris Bueller's Day Off where Ferris and Cameron tried to roll back the mileage on Cameron's dad's prized Ferrari -- an attempt that ended with the car shooting out of the garage and into a ravine.

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Massive Dealer Car Theft Ends With a Fiery Crash and Locked-Down College


In the old days, as in just a few years ago, a car thief might not be brazen enough to nab a ride in the middle of the day or from a busy parking lot, but things are different today. Now, we’re seeing massive gangs of thieves raiding dealerships and making off with several high-dollar models at a time. Fox 2 reported that Police in Flint, Michigan, rounded up more than two dozen people earlier this week for their roles in a vast car theft at a local dealer.

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Thieves Swap 26 Cars From Queens, NY Dealership

Car thieves broke into a car dealership in Queens, New York over the weekend, snatched the keys to 26 vehicles, and took them home.

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Columbus, Ohio City Attorney to Sue Hyundai, Kia Over Thefts

Columbus, Ohio City Attorney Zach Klein said earlier this week that he intends to file a lawsuit against Hyundai and Kia.

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Feds Announce Huge Catalytic Converter Theft Ring Bust

As if living through a pandemic and endless speculation that the United States is sliding away from democracy weren’t bad enough, some people decided that 2020 and 2021 were great times to start stealing catalytic converters at a record pace. The issue has been bad enough to make national news several times, but the Department of Justice just announced a major bust that could at least slow things down for a while.

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Will New Laws Prevent Catalytic Converter Thefts?

With catalytic converter theft having risen by 300 percent across the United States through the summer of 2021, regions of the country that have seen crime rates dwarfing the already brutal national average have started to introduce laws designed to prevent the issue from getting any worse.

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California Introduces Strict New Laws for Auto Parts

On Sunday, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed new legislation designed to prevent catalytic-converter thefts. The auto part has become a preferred target for criminals, especially on the West Coast, due to its high content of precious metals and relative ease of removal. Last year, more than 18,000 units are believed to have been hacked off in California alone and the issue only seems to be getting worse.

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Oregon Sees Sizable Stolen Catalytic Converter Bust


As you may have already heard, catalytic converter thefts are on the rise for a myriad of reasons. Crime is up in general, the economy is in rough shape, they're pretty easy to steal, difficult to track, and the price of certain metals found inside the emission-limiting devices (e.g. platinum, rhodium, and palladium) absolutely skyrocketed after global shutdowns stifled production. The issue has actually gotten so bad that even relatively small cities are reporting organized theft rings getting busted with piles of catalytic converts on hand.

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Decades-Old Grudge Leads to Torched Cars at Indiana Dealership


We've heard of holding grudges, but what happened at an Indiana car dealership recently has set our minds on fire.

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FTC Exploring Consumer Repair Rights Expansion

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has identified numerous repair restrictions in a new report to Congress. Parts replacement difficulty and parts availability limitations were among the restrictions.

Assisting in expanding repair options available to consumers is within the agency’s power. The Commission works with lawmakers on the state or federal level to provide choices when consumers repairs.

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SEMA Vs. the EPA's Attempt to Outlaw Race Cars

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is embroiled in a lawsuit with Gear Box Z, Inc., contending that the Clean Air Act (CAA), doesn’t allow you to convert your street car into a competition-only race vehicle.

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Super Bowl Aftermath — Boss Bust Leads to Ad Pull

Post Super Bowl sickness wasn’t limited to Kansas City Chiefs fans or those tired of seeing Brady and Gronk going to Disney World.

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Carlos Ghosn to Be Flambed by the French

Carlos Ghosn, Renault-Nissan’s former head honcho, will be questioned by investigators in Beirut next month, according to a report from Reuters that appeared in Autoblog. This time it’s not the Japanese applying the pressure, it’s the French.

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NHTSA Requires Odometer Statements Up to 20 Years

NHTSA, the U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, issued a reminder that starting January 1, 2021, every vehicle ownership transfer will require an odometer statement for the first 20 years.

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With Criminal Case Dismissed, General Motors' Ignition Switch Fiasco Nears An End

Four years after launching a massive, incredibly delayed recall aimed at preventing further deaths from its faulty ignition switches, General Motors freed itself from a criminal case launched in the scandal’s wake.

Earlier this week, federal prosecutors in New York wrote U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan, compelling him to dismiss the case. Nathan approved the request, lifting GM free of the caudron. The rationale for dismissing the two criminal charges — concealing evidence from federal officials and wire fraud — comes down to good behavior on GM’s part, something that certainly doesn’t describe its past actions.

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Hooning Temporarily Shut Down the Bay Bridge Over the Weekend

A trio of “driving enthusiasts” briefly shut down San Francisco’s Bay Bridge on Sunday morning after they decided it was the perfect place to do donuts. The vehicle’s involved appear to be a MkIII Toyota Supra and a pair of SN-95 Mustangs. According to the California Highway Patrol, the older of the two Mustangs was nabbed while its New Edge kindred escaped with the Supra — probably to get brunch somewhere across town.

Other drivers were also stopped and issued citations for illegal modifications, presumably because the cops couldn’t prove they helped stop traffic so the lead cars could put on a smoke show.

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Playing With Numbers: Texas Dealer Accused of Major Fraud

The Reagor Dykes Auto Group was formed in 2006 after Bart Reagor, shown above, teamed up with a business partner to create a company that now eclipses half a billion dollars in annual sales. This is accomplished through a myriad of manufacturer franchises ranging from Ford to Chevy to Toyota, not to mention its dozen or so rooftops dealing solely in used cars.

Now, the company is facing allegations of major financial chicanery. In court documents filed last week, Ford Motor Company accuses Reagor Dykes of running one of the “largest floor-plan financing frauds in the history of the United States.”

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License, Registration, and Saliva, Please: Critics Cry Foul Over 'DUID' Swab Test

As jurisdictions across the continent prepare to legalize the consumption of marijuana, assuming they haven’t already, the methods of testing for drug-impaired driving haven’t advanced quite as rapidly as legislation.

While breathalyzers are a mainstay of the law enforcement toolkit, getting an accurate reading of just how impaired a drug-using driver really is isn’t an exact science — despite some claims to the contrary. Blood tests for THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, are often misleading. Actual impairment really comes down to the user, not the blood reading. A driver’s buzz could easily have worn off long before getting behind the wheel, despite the elevated presence of THC in their bloodstream.

Apparently, demands for better testing is something the Colorado Department of Transportation hears at meeting after meeting.

North of the border, the entire country of Canada goes weed-legal this fall, and the likely method of detecting DUID (driving under the influence of drugs) is already coming under fire.

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Audi CEO Rupert Stadler Arrested, Declared a Flight Risk

Rupert Stadler, chief executive officer of Audi AG, was arrested in Munich Monday morning on suspicion of fraud, according to German prosecutors.

The CEO, who took the helm at Audi in 2007 after joining the company in 1990, was taken into custody following a years-long probe into Volkswagen Group’s emissions cheating. While the automaker has already paid a steep price at home and abroad for its defeat device-equipped diesel engines, today marks the highest profile arrest so far in the ongoing investigations.

According to German media, prosecutors claim Stadler poses a flight risk, meaning he’ll remain in custody for the time being.

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Volkswagen Group Fined an Additional $1.18 Billion for Emissions Cheating, More Suspects Emerge at Audi

In 2017, the U.S. hit Volkswagen with a $4.3 billion fine as part of the company’s plea agreement for violating of the Clean Air Act. It was a rough ride for the automaker, caught using defeat devices on its diesel engines, but it brought the scandal more or less to a close in America.

An ocean away, it seemed nothing would come of the endless raids by German authorities on VW-owned facilities. Apparently, the wheels of justice just turn a little slower in Europe, as the automaker was fined 1 billion euros on Wednesday. It’s one of the largest financial penalties ever imposed on a company by German authorities.

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Driving Under the Influence of Canada: Possession of Strange, Foreign Driver's License Sends Woman to Georgia Slammer

Any number of unpleasant things can befall a motorist after an unexpected, police-initiated roadside stop. Asset seizure being just one of the dangers. Of course, suspected drug use can also ruin your day, as well as your life.

For an Ontario woman pulled over for speeding on the I-75 in Cook County, Georgia, the item that landed her in jail was exactly what the officer asked for: a driver’s license. Sorry, wrong country, she was told.

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U.S. Gives Volkswagen's New Boss 'Safe Passage' Guarantee

Shortly after the United States formally accused former CEO of Volkswagen Martin Winterkorn of criminal wrongdoing related to the company’s diesel emission scandal, it decided to let the company’s new boss know that he’s safe to visit whenever he likes. The U.S. Justice Department has agreed to give Herbert Diess a safe-passage deal that allows him to travel without fear of being arrested.

Diess was also given the country’s assurance that he’ll be given advance notice if prosecutors eventually decide to charge him over the emissions cheating issue. So far as we know, no such deal exists for his predecessor, Matthias Müller, who replaced Winterkorn in September of 2015.

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Dodge the Security, Ram the Gate: New Pickups Stolen From Factory

Police in Michigan are flummoxed and frustrated after a theft of nearly a dozen brand new Ram pickups from the Warren Truck Assembly Plant. Like a scene from Gone in 60 Seconds, the ne’er-do-wells are alleged to have crashed freshly manufactured Rams through secured gates before hightailing it south on Mound Road.

“This was well-planned,” said Warren Police Commissioner Bill Dwyer, who takes home top honors in today’s Most Obvious Statement competition.

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When You're Thumbing Your Nose at the Law With a Laser Jammer, Maybe You Shouldn't Also Flip Them Off

At first, the headlines looked like a serious breach of justice: “Man Gets 8 Months In Prison After Flipping-Off Traffic Camera.” A jail sentence for a rude gesture?

As much as I have concerns about civil liberties and law enforcement, after tracking down the actual news (or at least a press release from the relevant police agency), it appears the case wasn’t as simple as jailing a man for flipping a bird at a speed camera. I have to say that the guy probably deserved some legal grief, if only for being too brazen.

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Canada's Worst(?) Used Car Salesman Heads Back to the Slammer, Leaves Misery and At Least One Broken Home in His Wake

We told you last year of the outrageous case of an Oshawa, Ontario used car salesman who bilked unwitting customers out of their hard-earned cash before being sentenced to a month in jail. Well, a second trial recently adjourned, and Ryen Maxwell of Countryside Motors now faces 180 days in the big house.

A repeat fraudster, this former salesman’s list of financial atrocities is a long one. In addition to causing fiscal hardship for numerous customers, Maxwell’s actions can be credited with causing, or at least contributing to, one woman becoming stranded in a rural snowbank and the breakup of another man’s marriage. Is it any wonder BHPH lots carry a stigma?

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Wells Fargo Fined $1 Billion For Auto Insurance Scandal, Mortgage Misdeeds

Wells Fargo is getting slammed with all kinds of penalties over shady business practices. Currently prohibited from growing its business as investigators look into its practices, the bank has restructured itself after it was implicated in widespread auto insurance and mortgage lending abuse in the summer of 2017. It’s also still coping with an earlier scandal involving local branches opening fake accounts for customers.

Last week, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency suggested Well Fargo pay $1 billion to “resolve” the governmental probes into those issues. That changed today when the bureau filed a consent order announcing it was time for the bank to pay up.

The fine applies to the mortgage lending issues, as well as Wells Fargo’s past practice of charging thousands of auto loan customers for insurance they didn’t need and often didn’t even know about. The move caused some borrowers to default on their loans, resulting in their vehicles being repossessed. The consent order mandates that the bank remediate those customers.

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Fiat Chrysler Can Look Forward to a Big Summer Eco Payout

When Fiat Chrysler Automobiles regails the class with a “how I spend my summer” story this fall, expect some mention of handing over large sums of money to state and federal governments.

The U.S. Department of Justice and California Air Resources Board want the automaker to make things right after accusing it of polluting the nation’s air via its 3.0-liter EcoDiesel V6 engines. Some 104,000 Jeep and Ram vehicles from the 2014 to 2016 model years contained emissions control devices not revealed to the Environmental Protection Agency, which came down hard on the automaker after their discovery. According to FCA’s lawyer, the settlement could come this summer.

What does the DOJ want? According to an earlier settlement offer sent to the automaker, the levelling of “very substantial civil penalties” is the only way to ensure FCA learns its lesson.

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Maryland or Bust(ed): Driver Nabbed Going Over 160 MPH in Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat

Indiana State Police proudly announced the capture of a speed demon who was ripping down the highway at over twice the legal limit. The diver, 38-year old J. Jesus Duran Sandoval, was allegedly trying to break the sound barrier on the Indiana Toll Road Tuesday evening when he hurtled past an officer at an extremely high rate of speed.

State Trooper Dustin Eggert, who was merging back into traffic after helping a broken down motorist near the 45 mile marker, took chase but found the 707-horsepower Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat difficult to keep up with. At one point he found himself driving 150 miles an hour, noting that the vehicle he was pursuing continued to pull away as he radioed for backup.

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Breaking: Sleazy Used Car Salesman Heads to the Slammer

It’s among the most prolific stereotypes of the automotive world. The shady used car salesman. Often pictured standing next to an overvalued Kia Sephia (a “smokin’ deal!”) while wearing a loud sport coat and white belt, the specter of these fly-by-night fraudsters have plagued reputable dealers for decades.

In Oshawa, Ontario, a city best known for housing General Motors’ Canadian headquarters and a former TTAC managing editor, one such criminal just met his fate. How sweet it must be for the poor buyer he swindled.

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Detroit Police Officers Confess to Car-stripping Scheme

Four officers from the Detroit Police Department pleaded guilty to extortion charges this week, with another two being indicted, after receiving bribes from body shops looking for stolen and abandoned vehicles obtained by the city. Federal investigators have been looking into the scheme, which involves shops collecting thousands of dollars from insurance companies for unnecessary repairs, for well over a year.

The accused officers are believed to have reported stolen or abandoned vehicles to a single towing company, rather than police dispatch. From there, the towing service would pay them a $50 to $100 “finders fee” before notifying the car’s owner that it had been stolen and sustained unspecified damages. Fortunately, the towing service always knew of a repair shop that would “waive the deductible.”

The cars were then stripped so the claims adjuster could quote the vehicle for thousands of dollars in damages.

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Oregon Man Wins Three-year-long Constitutional Battle Sparked by Red Light Camera Ticket

You can’t fight city hall, they say, but you can fight the state of Oregon — and win.

That’s what one man, Mats Järlström, found out after a dogged fight against the Oregon State Board of Examiners for Engineering and Land Surveying. The epic constitutional battle, which pitted a former electronics engineer against an overzealous bureaucracy, began when his wife received a ticket for running a red light.

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Nabbed in Miami Bathroom, Volkswagen Executive Gets Seven Years for Role in Diesel Conspiracy

The judge didn’t go easy on the former Volkswagen executive. Oliver Schmidt, 48, former general manager of Volkswagen’s U.S. Environment and Engineering Office, was sentenced to seven years in prison and handed a $400,000 fine Wednesday for his role in covering up the automaker’s diesel emissions deception.

Schmidt’s punishment is the maximum allowed under the plea deal he reached in August. The executive pleaded guilty to two charges relating to the conspiracy to violate the country’s Clean Air Act with a fleet of pollution-spewing diesel cars.

“It is my opinion that you are a key conspirator in this scheme to defraud the United States,” U.S. District Judge Sean Cox of Detroit told Schmidt. “You saw this as your opportunity to shine … and climb the corporate ladder at VW.”

The sentencing wraps up a legal saga that began, unpleasantly, as Schmidt sat on a Miami toilet during a vacation stopover.

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Uber Paid Hackers to Delete the Stolen Data of 57 Million People

In the midst of Uber Technologies’ corporate restructuring and cultivation of a squeaky-clean new image, the ride-hailing company was apparently hiding a dark secret. Striving for transparency, the company has now confessed that hackers stole the personal information of 57 million customers and drivers in October of 2016.

The coverup, apparently conducted by the firm’s chief security officer and another staff member, involved over $100,000 in payments to the hackers in the hopes to keep them quiet. The data lost included names, email addresses, and phone numbers of around 50 million Uber riders across the globe. Another 7 million drivers were also subjected to the digital attack, with over half a million of those losing their driver’s license numbers.

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Sorry, Canadians - You'll Still Lose Your Driver's License for Being Tipsy in a Rowboat

Some might quibble over where “the limit” should be when we’re talking drunk driving — 0.05, 0.08, 0.10 — but few responsible people would argue against the need for impaired driving legislation. Until smartphones and other distracting electronic accoutrements came along, boozy drivers were the leading cause of carnage on the roads.

Now, many of us our personal vehicle to drive to the lake, the seaside, or perhaps a nearby river, where our boat, be it large or small, awaits. Maybe it’s a canoe or kayak. Maybe — because cabin cruiser dollars are hard to come by — it’s an inflatable mattress or inner tube where you can use your feet for propulsion.

Well, if you reside north of the border and were thinking of popping a few beers and paddling about in your human-powered floatation device (after hearing Canada’s recent announcement that drunk driving laws would no longer apply to unmotorized boats), think again. Special interest groups have intervened, and that law will remain on the books.

Drunk paddling? There goes your Chevrolet.

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Those U.S. Volkswagen Diesels Aren't the Easiest Thing to Fix; VW Rounds Up Scandal Bill to $30 Billion

Twenty-seven billion seemed like an odd number, so Volkswagen upped the financial cost of its diesel emissions scandal to an even $30B. Actually, the extra expense comes entirely from the repair of older U.S.-market vehicles, which are proving less easy to fix than anticipated.

Because of this, VW has to rustle up some extra cash. The automaker set aside $26.7 billion to put the scandal behind it, and this latest price jump has the company pole vaulting over that marker.

This isn’t the only new grief facing VW, however. German media and The New York Times are reporting the arrest of the highest-ranking official so far — VW Group’s former powertrain chief.

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  • EBFlex Garbage but for less!
  • FreedMike I actually had a deal in place for a PHEV - a Mazda CX-90 - but it turned out to be too big to fit comfortably in my garage, thus making too difficult to charge, so I passed. But from that, I learned the Truth About PHEVs - they're a VERY niche product, and probably always be, because their use case is rather nebulous. Yes, you can run on EV power for 25-30 miles, plug it in at home on a slow charger, and the next day, you're ready to go again. Great in theory, but in practice, a) you still need a home charger, b) you paid a LOT more for the car than you would have for a standard hybrid, and c) you discover the nasty secret of PHEVs, which is that when they're on battery power, they're absolute pigs to drive. Meanwhile, to maintain its' piglike battery-only performance, it still needs to be charged, so you're running into all the (overstated) challenges that BEV owners have, with none of the performance that BEV owners like. To quote King George in "Hamilton": " Awesome. Wow." In the Mazda's case, the PHEV tech was used as a performance enhancer - which worked VERY nicely - but it's the only performance-oriented PHEV out there that doesn't have a Mercedes-level pricetag. So who's the ideal owner here? Far as I can tell, it's someone who doesn't mind doing his 25 mile daily commute in a car that's slow as f*ck, but also wants to take the car on long road trips that would be inconvenient in a BEV. Meanwhile, the MPG Uber Alles buyers are VERY cost conscious - thus the MPG Uber Alles thing - and won't be enthusiastic about spending thousands more to get similar mileage to a standard hybrid. That's why the Volt failed. The tech is great for a narrow slice of buyers, but I think the real star of the PHEV revival show is the same tax credits that many BEVs get.
  • RHD The speed limit was raised from 62.1 MPH to 68.3 MPH. It's a slight difference which will, more than anything, lower the fines for the guy caught going 140 KPH.
  • Msquare The argument for unlimited autobahns has historically been that lane discipline is a life-or-death thing instead of a suggestion. That and marketing cars designed for autobahn speeds gives German automakers an advantage even in places where you can't hope to reach such speeds. Not just because of enforcement, but because of road conditions. An old Honda commercial voiced by Burgess Meredith had an Accord going 110 mph. Burgess said, "At 110 miles per hour, we have found the Accord to be quiet and comfortable. At half that speed, you may find it to be twice as quiet and comfortable." That has sold Mercedes, BMW's and even Volkswagens for decades. The Green Party has been pushing for decades for a 100 km/h blanket limit for environmental reasons, with zero success.
  • Varezhka The upcoming mild-hybrid version (aka 500 Ibrida) can't come soon enough. Since the new 500e is based on the old Alfa Mito and Opel Adam platform (now renamed STLA City) you'd have thought they've developed the gas version together.