FEDS ACTIVELY CHASING ILLEGALLY TITLED GT-Rs

[Music] another day another seizure of smuggled black market cars this time not in florida but in california that story is coming up right after the break confession i hate cleaning my own cars that's why i love adam's polishes whatever you want to clean polish shine adams has a specific product just for that even for matte finishes since 2000 adams polishes has been offering premium car care products dedicated to the enthusiast whether you're a professional detailer or a weekend warrior their innovative and effective products will enable you to achieve amazing results on your prized possession atoms made with pride and passion in the usa so a story surfaced last week out of a place called woodland california which is up near sacramento about 500 500 miles north of me there was a link in the store going to a place called apple towing likely just a regular towing company who happens to have a government approved vendor status so they weren't part of it but midori's park shop posted photos and a short summary of what we were seeing in the picture and what was confiscated cars that we saw in the picture the seized cars included sylvia's r34s a stagia a couple of chasers arrestos and a jdm accord euro r among others by my calculation close to a million dollars in cars and street value it's weird to say street failure about cars right the pictures show cars with their power trains removed and placed on a pallet just as they would be transported in containers for those companies who were illegally importing these things as car parts here's a gtr shell oh here oh the mortar happens to be on the pallet right in front of it nothing shady nothing to see here anyway they probably didn't pack the thing right in an x-ray caught the attention of customs and border patrol so here we are once they open the containers and take a look at the paperwork they realize they had something there an investigation ensued and then the whole thing blew up here's a list of the now blacklisted bins if you ever choose to buy one of these models of cars you might want to check that vin against this list because if your van is on this list this car cannot go back to the united states it's now it won't they won't look back in even after the 2024 rule so don't buy these cars those cars going back overseas now these cars are probably confiscated a long time ago but they were recently put up for auction by the feds and before you start rambling about how are the feds able to sell illegal cars let me clear that up these cars were sold for export only to non-contiguous countries for those who didn't take geography in school or english or maybe you were just sick that day the word non-contiguous means not connected to okay in plain english what that means is these cars cannot just be exported to canada or mexico they have to leave the north american continent that means that the winning bidder will have to sell these cars to other countries like japan france germany spain or wherever but not here in north america the final bid reached 148 000 which is a pretty good deal for 800 000 in cars right but not if they have to be shipped far away from the usa and they can never come back because they can never be registered in this country and if anyone dares to re-import these cars the feds will probably get a wind of it crush it and these things are just going to be gone forever so pretty good idea not to bring those cars back into the united states so the question is how did these cars even get past customs and border patrol in the first place this simple but scary explanation is that cbp can only inspect about two percent of the cargo containers that come into this country and there are hundreds of thousands of containers that come in every year two percent that's it let that sink in if the notion that a dirty nuclear bomb could be smuggled into the country inside one of the other 98 of uninspected containers if that doesn't keep you awake at night it sure as hell should shady importers know this and they just play the odds that's how they get it through because most of the containers are never open and when they do get caught the feds back trace the documents all the way back to the shipper and back to the receiving importer and you can guess what happens then further investigations usually follow with cases being referred to the proper federal authorities and that's when things start to get missing in this case the customs broker is a well-known entity called great luck and before anyone starts asserting that great luck was a party to this or partly to blame you have to understand their role in all of this great luck is a customs broker great luck relies on the claims of their customers customers fill out the documentation and submit it for review that's how it goes right if the customers are lying about the contents of the container great luck is not to blame in this scenario great luck is like uh dhl if you want to import a kilo of cocaine from overseas and the feds bust you dhl is pretty much off the hook why because they don't inspect the contents of the packages that's not their job they rely on the on the shipper's paperwork it's not complacency it's just the way it works in this case the feds inspected the container and found that the contents are essentially what they call contraband and that raised the red flags so the parts were seized and here we are basically it's yet again another lesson that just because you can smuggle something into the country it doesn't make it legal now everybody should be pissed about this everybody who cares about gtr should be pissed each car caught up in these stings could end up being crushed by the feds meaning fewer cars available when these cars become legal in 2024 and driving the prices up again and with prices of these japanese classics going into the stratosphere already every car that gets destroyed makes the prices on the remaining cars go even higher it's all supply and demand remember so everybody should be outraged by this over the years there have been so many companies bringing black market r34s there's probably hundreds of these cars running around a lot of them are florida title as it turns out the stories of shady importers have made the automotive news websites in recent years very publicly and very interestingly who can forget the rip suit debacle remember that one that was a great one ripster stories were all over the internet a few years ago this florida importer's reputation was already on the decline when they found themselves in deep financial trouble here's where the story gets weird owner stephen emily mccarty from florida took on an investor named craig seidel who by chance today owns a jdm car rental place in las vegas he was caught up in this seidl was said to have loan owner steve mccarty 335 thousand dollars to refund customer payments on three r34 gtrs after seidel did a little more research on roof so he decided that he wanted out and he wanted his money back but by then steve and his wife emily had left hound their house was emptied and they were long gone it seemed to happen overnight nobody knows where they've gone they allegedly duped seidel into investing with them by giving him three separate purchase agreements on three of those r34 gtrs and these cars had already been prepaid by other customers according to a former employee if that's not shady i don't know what is according to a statement in april of 2018 alexis bakovsky deputy communications director for the florida department of highway safety and motor vehicles he basically said that the rivsu imports dealer license had expired on 4 30 or april 30th 2018 and that the their location was now abandoned and they were just gone and then on june 11th of 2018 the florida department of revenue filed their own warrants against them to recover sales taxes delinquent sales taxes and use taxes so they were into the the government the state camera from another 7 300 bucks another florida importer that imploded in a very messy and public way was black cops performance that was a fun one john stegnitto who was originally from new york or new jersey or pennsylvania i was a call he was the owner and he found himself all over internet news stories by jalopnik the drive and yahoo and others back in was a 2016-2017 stagnetta has had been in trouble with the law from an early age as it turns out he has a criminal conviction from 1987 for burglary and receiving stolen property oh man i guess when you have a felony you just opened a business don't recognize his name well you'll recognize the story remember the red gtr that was confiscated at an actual car show in florida back in 2017 remember this yep that was john stegnetta his company black ops quickly imploded right after that happened it all happened overnight now i knew this guy personally let me tell you that story i was connected he was referred to me by a good friend of mine as a web client because you know i do digital marketing i had no idea who this guy was when i was hired to build his website i built a black ops website for them back in the day now there were already red flags with my business dealing with this guys mostly because of unkept promises it was hard to get payment out of it it was just slow response times and all kind of stuff worst kind of client i finished the website job and i basically just forgot about the guy i didn't want to do business with him anymore and it was done because those clients are are just toxic then the scandal broke and i had already cut ties with this guy before the scandal largely because i get unfilled for commitments and poor communication and so forth and just basic flakiness so the black ops instagram count is still active believe it or not and it's now run by a former employee who i've i've had contact with about two or three years ago he's been posting all kinds of stories and information and some wild allegations which i won't even get into but you can go and check it out for yourself and scroll through the post you'll see a lot of information you can you can come to your own conclusion but since he's not here to defend himself then it's probably not fair to talk anymore about it but out of curiosity i want to do some more fact checking so i checked for updates on the civil lawsuits brought against him public legal documents show a judgment against john recently and i think it was last year for 79 500 bucks and john's legal troubles with his importing businesses go back to at least 2013 where another judgment was filed for fifteen thousand dollars for not delivering a car allegedly no word on the whether or not that had been paid but you can guess that it probably hasn't there appeared to be many additional victims of unkept promises false representation undelivered parts undelivered cars and so forth and all that kind of thing we'll have to see how those play out in court sometimes people who are buying illegal cars don't want to go to court to talk about it bottom line black ops is done and they were done in 2016 and if you see the name john stignetta associated with any new business endeavor you'd probably be well advised to stay clear now this stuff might have been going on for years but since 2014 everybody's been on social media so we see all this stuff so when the importers are using shady tactics or have bad business practices word spreads fast and unfortunately and coincidentally most of these scandals which have come to light have been in florida and that's just the way it is remember montu motors you know those guys they found themselves under harsh scrutiny for a car that they allegedly delivered with dangerous structural damage i saw the pictures some of the frame parts were covered with foam and duct tape that's not laziness that's that's just a seat if you ask me in my opinion somehow the car passed a certified inspection in japan i'm going to submit that this inspector was either senile or drunk on sake there's no way you could have missed that at that car even if you looked underneath the car you'd think montu would have had the car on a lift at some point and would have spotted the issue there was no way you could have missed it if it was on a lift if they didn't put the car on a lift for an inspection they suck at their job if they did put it on an inspection and missed it they suck at the job in my opinion they are either incompetent or they're just shady either way there's no way i'd buy a car from those guys and i bet everybody who looked at that article said the same thing and this was in 2020 guess where it happened yep florida sorry i don't put these companies there that's they chose to do it there apparently florida is the wild wild west again and of course that story was all over the internet another one high rev motors aka evolution imports were both run by the same guy who was allegedly using fake addresses the history of frank aka francesco modello goes back to at least 2005 where people were leveling wild allegations on nissan forums about unkept promises and shady business practices and orgasm however he seems to have gone on and is still operating today from my research shows that frank is now tied to right-hand drive collective and i saw no legal illegal cars on their website except for a black r34 that may or may not be legal but why speculate without proof right either way enough question about how they were bringing cars is probably a good reason to give paws to potential customers but reading all these stories one would think that all the shady importing is happening only in florida that's not the case it's widely whispered that there are at least a couple of importers on the west coast who have allegedly brought a car or cars into this country at one point or another kaizo went through an investigation a few years ago which was very public it ended up with a misdemeanor infraction and several cars were surrendered after several years in court the misdemeanor plea deal allowed several owners to get their cars back so no felony charges no big convictions and anything like that the kaizo incident was well publicized during the early stages but the outcome was never really given the same amount of publicity everybody just wants to hear the first part of the story they don't want to hear the second part of the story right as for other west coast importers who may have or have not imported cars or a car outside of the law they seem to have been able to stay under the radar largely because none of this has come to light there's been no proof and there's been no seizures there have been no stories on jalopnik the drive or anywhere else that i can find so for now those people are anonymous i guess so why does it seem that florida is the hot spot of shady importers it's not just about the fact that there were shady importers there the simple fact of the matter is that florida is the easiest place to get a car title as a result many of the black market cars no matter where they originated from or pass through to get into the united states are registered in florida that's why everybody talks about florida is the hub for this because all these cars are running around the florida plates how does that happen well either dmv employees in florida or mental midgets or they just don't care i guess there's another option or perhaps there's some bribery going on at the dmv maybe it's all happening through one dmv right and everybody's got the hookup or maybe the state is just happy to collect the registration fees and just turn the blind eye until the feds want to jump in and do something about it but the simple fact of the matter is this there is a hard and fast 25-year rule in the united states if the car is not yet 25 years old it's just not legal here with one exemption i'll talk about in a minute and i don't care what state their car was registered state registration means nothing in the eyes of the federal government state is here feds are here just because dhl delivers you a kilo of smuggled drugs doesn't mean that the feds won't kick in the door right after that and take you to jail you see where i'm going in the eyes of the federal government these are black market cars and they cannot be made legal and before some commenter says that you can get gtrs here under the show on display rule that exemption applies to only three collectible gtrs and most people can't afford any of those cars but we'll talk about that in a moment as a reminder show or display is a special national highway traffic safety administration exemption it's a mouthful basically it allows certain approved vehicles to be imported legally to the united states without meeting federal motor vehicle safety standard requirements the show or display exemption became effective in august of 1999 i want to say and some of the first vehicles that were approved were the porsche 959 and the mclaren f1 yeah these are the only skylines currently eligible for import under the show and display exemption there have been exactly three nissan skyline gtr variants on the show and display list here they are number one is the 1990 nissan skyline gtr nismo number two was the 99 v-spec midnight purple two car and the number three is the 2002 gtr m-spec nerd that's it nothing else those it that's it that's it and since midnight purple 2 cars are selling for over 300 000 right now let's just agree that there's no way to affordably get an r34 here before 2024. and by then even regular r34 ttrs will probably be up over 200 000 so it's a dream for many people in addition everybody knows about the 14 motorex gtrs that are fully federally legal although the number might be as high as 17 to 20 but there's no documentation there's other cars so i can't no one can really say for sure some of these owners might just be flying under the radar and hiding their cars because who knows how the feds are going to interpret the rules next week right so if you see an r34 gtr to car show and it doesn't fall into either of these groups the motorex cars that are showing display it's probably a black market car meaning it's not legal even if it has a valid license plate people and everybody in the gtr business knows this yet some importers are still willing to cut corners and smuggle these cars into the country even though they know the consequences maybe they're just willing to take the chance i don't think anybody's ended up in jail for this but who knows these illegal importers know that if they get caught they can cooperate with the fred's and probably rat out their customers to lessen their sentence or the consequences that's not good or vice versa people who own these cars if they get busted they can rat out their importer who will just declare bankruptcy and screw everyone and then everything gets shut down and the cars start to get seized and everybody gets screwed meanwhile cars are gonna get seized they're gonna get sold or maybe even crushed we have a phrase for these cars that we use they're called hot potatoes the last person holding the keys when the feds come knocking gets burned and you'll have no recourse who you're going to sue when out of business dealer probably isn't licensed bonded or insured anyway unfortunately florida has been the hot spot of nearly all of the most conspicuous scandals and debauchery involving these gtrs and that's unfortunate so it's giving the whole state a bad name and unfortunately things are about to get hotter for florida title gtrs recently there were some letters sent to florida title gtr owners telling them to contact a specific person at the florida highway patrol because their titles were being canceled now it's not clear how and why the titles were canceled basically because they're fraudulent but you can bet that none of these cars were properly imported so what's going to happen to those cars anybody's guess at this particular moment and there are plenty of people all over the united states running around with florida titles including here in california colorado washington on so forth and my source implied that more than 300 illegal r34s have been identified and letters have gone out to or are about to go out to many of them now this is a game changer this potentially means that the house of cards is about to fall and we've been hearing rumors about it but maybe this is the start of it sooner or later one of these owners will ride out his supplier and an investigation will probably ensue and it might lead to more cars being seized or surrendered by their owners to avoid more serious charges and who knows what the final disposition of the car is going to be unfortunately this archaic 25 year old role is making criminals out of collectors and it's just a horrible situation who's to play well first of course the shady importers who break the claw and they do it very publicly and then before that the root cause of course is mercedes back in 1988 an initiative among german automakers led by mercedes-benz saw several of the german automakers come together and spend millions of dollars lobbying congress to pass the imported vehicle safety compliance act yeah like they were caring about safety they were caring about their profits because sales of gray market benzes was hurting mercedes and so they leaned on our elected legislators who were always happy to take a campaign donation this led us down the path of the restrictive anti-import laws we have today including the ban on cars under 25 years old now i think a 15-year rule would be better and canada has done just that it seems to be working very well for them but they never sold gtrs in this country so why can't we couldn't get them that car should be exempt if our government was smart they'd charge an import duty of say 10 to 20 of the purchase price problem solved everybody makes money and we're not stealing any gtr sales in japan it'll be interesting to see which importers get snared in the upcoming florida title investigation and more importantly what will happen to the cars that will likely be seized or blacklisted from getting valid titles in the united states ever now if i were an owner of one of these cars i'd be pretty worried that i might lose it with no financial recourse and i'd probably stick that car somewhere safe or export it with 2024 just around the corner though the 25 year rule will apply and so i doubt we will be hearing much more about illegal importers whether they're in california colorado texas washington or florida but we'll have to say but again just remember these cars are not legal and if you buy one that's not legal and it gets seized can't help you so don't get stuck with a hot potato thanks for watching everybody share this video with your friends i appreciate it and don't forget to subscribe we'll see you next time [Music] you

Channel: Craig Lieberman

Views: 43,785

Rating: 4.8879933 out of 5

Keywords: Nissan Skyline, Skyline GTR, Nissan, R34 GTR, Paul Walker, VinWiki

Id: BIltIL3rcDY

Length: 21min 0sec (1260 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 29 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Mogwire]

A company down in Miami is notorious for selling illegally imported cars. They tend to scrub their website once the cars are sold.

Here is an example of a 1999 Silvia sold in 2020 -

http://rmcmiami.com/inventory/1999-nissan-240sx-silvia-s15-spec-r-sr20-turbo-375hp-well-sorted-6-speed-manual-with-new-tein-coilovers-new-clutch/

They tend to list the illegal cars on Craigslist. I've seen Sivia, RX7, Supra, all well under the 25 year law.

You call and ask if the car has been imported via the Show and Shine and they hang up. They know what they are doing.

[u/TaskForceCausality]

Reminds me of the bonehead who tried to defraud a seller on Craigslist by misrepresenting his illegally imported R34. If you’re gonna break the law, don’t be an asshole by flaunting it or you’re gonna get busted.

[u/01WS6]

GTR? No officer, this is an old 240sx with a skyline GTR body kit, i swear!

[u/Morning_Wood_Chipper]

I lost all my GTRs with all my guns in a tragic boating accident.

[u/DarkMatterM4]

Top tip: if you're going to spend the big bucks to buy any sort of imported vehicle, don't buy them from a Florida importer. You're just asking for trouble. Any one remember Rivsu Imports?

[u/Xanzar21]

Can we lower the 25 year rule down to 5 years.

[u/d0rito5]

There was a guy in the U.S. selling a '00 FD in one of my RX7 groups about a year back. Claimed it was totally legal because it had a Florda title. He also wanted like $90k for it IIRC, which made it extra sad/funny.

That post got deleted pretty quick.

[u/Hunt3rj2]

None of this stuff is really all that crazy, just a summary of stuff that has been shared on various Facebook groups. One big list of cars seized near Sacramento and a big summary of sketchy importers like Montu Motors, Black Ops Performance, and Rivsu Motors. The big thing is right at the end talking about potentially imminent seizures.

[u/adamk24]

AdamLZ added to most wanted list.

I think it's such a waste of resources to bother tracking these down though. Not only is the rule itself doing no good to the public, but they will be legal in just a few years when they turn 25 years old.