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Texas Plumber Sues Car Dealer After His Truck Ends Up In Videos of Syria's Front Lines (mashable.com)
New submitter hydrodog writes: A Texas plumber traded in his truck, which ended up in ISIS videos showing his logo and phone number. Now he is getting hundreds of harassing phone calls for 'supporting ISIS' and is suing the dealership for not taking off his information before selling it. He is seeking more than $1 million in damages. According to Mashable: "According to the complaint, filed last week, a salesman at the dealership, Edgar Vasquez, told Oberholtzer 'not to worry about the decal,' saying that peeling it off would 'blemish the vehicle paint.' 'At no time did Vasquez or any other agent, servant, or employee of the Defendant tell Plaintiff that Defendant would leave the decals on the truck, which would be transferred in some fashion to international jihadists conducting warfare upon innocents in Syria,' reads the complaint.
Applying Hillary Clinton logos and decals to my car and trading it in.
BRB.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/66d1d3ec-2f19-11e0-88ec-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3uLdcGolO
FTFA:
In a statement...Toyota added: “It is not our proudest piece of product placement. But it shows the Taliban are looking for the same qualities as any other truck buyer: quality and durability.”
That's a bold pivot to a positive message. Maybe the plumber can lean in and tell customers if he can put up with ISIS's shit, he can put up with theirs.
Dance like you're hurt, Love like you need money, and work when somebody's watching.
-Scott Adams
... isn't that kinda obvious?
never retires.
Another frivilus laws suite.
A better question is how the hell this vehicle somehow ended up being shipped to the middle east where it could be sold to ISIS?
Not so much the unfortunate plumber, but good old American capitalism is equipping the bad guys.
After all, wouldn't you rather drive a Ford?
How come *he* didn't peel them off before selling it.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
if you sell something as is, how can you complain about what the person does with it afterwards?
guy should have taken the stuff off the truck before selling it if he didnt want someone else driving a truck with his logos on it
having said that, how did they end up there???
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
grandstanders, the 4.1BsD product, Is the ultimate
It was supposed to have been sold at auction and imported to Turkey.... then sold again across the border... but that doesn't seem quite right. Turkey gets cheap second hand cars from Europe, to Europe spec.
But it could simply be that someone is pumping us with propaganda and took the photo in Texas and didn't think to check the truck they bought.
That second option seems the most likely.
http://www.inquisitr.com/2632442/texas-plumbers-life-ruined-by-isis-after-selling-his-truck-takes-dealership-to-court-video/
The complicated and implausible explanation of how his trucks goes from Texas to Syria could have been added later when the problem was spotted.
How come *you* didn't RTFA before posting?
'Cause they explain that part.
This story seems really familiar.
Is this recycled old news?
The obvious answer to the phone calls: "Why are you watching ISIS videos? Are you a fan? Glad you noticed my business, though. Call any time."
That truck appears to use a 6.0 PowerStroke, an engine that was a joint Ford and Navistar venture. Said engine is well known for its problems, to the point where one has to have the heads "bulletproofed" (no, not so it can eat .50 cal rounds, but so engine doesn't expire.) This is due to an oil cooling system that needs to pretty much be rebuilt, or else it had a tendency to clog up with particles, causing the engine to seize.
Sad thing is that diesel engines in general have sunk in quality. If it isn't an issue with the DEF crystallizing, it is the DPF plugging up and causing the engine to throw codes.
The Confederate battle flag was a dead giveaway.
Best way to remove a decal from a vehicle is to use a hair dryer. It heats up the glue enough to loosen it, then once removed, apply/remove a coat of wax to get rid of any residue left.
The defendant, however, says he mentioned it 2 or 3 times.
Who is damaged if an asset tag or logo is found on a device a decade later?
Who benefits from resale of used product a decade earlier?
Who should bear the liability? Who got the profit, of the logo in original use, of the device at auction?
"Kids, put your name on it, but remember to take your name off when you resell it." Putting that liability on the auctioneer raises insurance costs we all bear.
Gently reply
Well according to this, its about $1400 to Mersin in Turkey, without the local US shipping from Texas to the port.
https://www.auctionexport.com/en/Home/Shipping
For turkey the paperwork (via Google) is:
So the whole story looks dodgy as fuck. This seems to be a photograph, not a video, is there a video? Or some detail ensuring its actually IN Syria and not just in a dusty place like Texas? If the truck has been sold in a cold green place in the US, then I'd be less suspicious, but it was sold in Texas, which would be the place you'd film to fake Syria.
************
"Customs Tax on Cars Shipped to Turkey"
The customs fee for cars depends on the vehicle's engine size and age and also whether you are obtaining temporary status or applying for a residence permit.
Obtaining Temporary Entry for Your Vehicle
To obtain the entry card, you need to first pay a fee and present the following documents:
Residence permit (for work, education or retirement purposes)
Your work permit (if you are a foreigner working in Turkey)
Foreign retirees need a document indicating the amount of their retirement pension
For students, a certificate from their school
Passport and a photocopy
Valid driving license and photocopy
Proof of ownership (registration documents, purchase invoice)
Proof of insurance valid in Turkey
After the temporary entry card has been issued for the imported vehicle, you must take it to the customs office to pay the fee. In addition, if you are registering the vehicle you have to go to the Turkish Traffic Department Directorate in the specific province that you received residence."
So is the US Treasury. They are actively investigating why ISIS has so many Toyota's. There are so many of them, this is a quote from the article: “Regrettably, the Toyota Land Cruiser and Hilux have effectively become almost part of the ISIS brand,” said Mark Wallace, a former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.
Whenever I see another one of those Daesh videos, I have always wondered where that rogue Toyota dealership is so we can wipe it out. Who know that it was in Texas?
Dealers tend to have full disclosure of transactions. Normally there's a document called a "Due Bill" or a "We Owe" that specifically states that there are no promises or additions made or included that are not written on said document. The same document usually includes language stating no oral additions or deletions will be honored. At the point the seller transferred ownership of the purchase vehicle and the buyer transferred ownership of the trade, the transaction was complete.
Had the customer wanted to sell his trade without the markings, he should have removed them (before transferring) or had the removal listed on the due bill.
It is not reasonable to assume that the dealer would have any idea the trade would end up with an organization US traders are precluded trade with.
Regardless of how reprehensible of a situation the customer now faces, I doubt the dealer will be held liable. It's quite possible that the wholesaler that made the ultimate sale to the current owner is, or the person that transferred it to that seller is, but I would think liability issues would be the least of their concerns.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B - D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
When your HDD fails under warranty, most manufacturers just have you send it in and they send you a refurbished drive. Then they go about fixing your drive, and will send that out as a refurbished drive to replace someone else's failed HDD.
I've always wondered - what about the data that was on your failed drive? Do they just do a quick format? A full format? Or do they do a secure erase on the drive (overwrite every sector with zeros) before sending it back out? If the person who receives your old drive manages to recover your data from it, can you sue the HDD manufacturer? If you were selling the HDD, you'd secure erase it yourself before shipping it. But when the drive fails, that usually makes it impossible to do a secure erase on it.
If you have sensitive data on the drive, your only choices seem to be to send it in under warranty and hope the HDD manufacturer acts responsibly and secure erases it. Or to play it safe and destroy the drive, giving up the warranty. It seems like there should be some middle ground between those two extremes.
Looks like it also incurs 6% import duty (typical I haven't yet found the car import duty), and a further 18% sales tax. So a second hand truck sold for say $800, would add about $200 in Turkey taxes, say $200 in local shipping to the port, and another $200 at the other end, $1400 in ocean freight charge, plus whatever the paperwork costs to do.
http://www.dutycalculator.com/country-guides/Import-duty-taxes-when-importing-into-Turkey/
So far we're looking at spending $1800 shipping an $800 truck to Turkey, rather than simply importing from the EU where its duty free and you just drive it over the border.
ISIS is suing him back: his repairs failed and their pipes leak.
Table-ized A.I.
A lot of vehicles that are undesirable to Americans can fetch great money overseas. Especially cars that had been totaled, for example.
Trace how it got to ISIS, you will then know who the real domestic terrorists are. This plumber deserves every penny he can get from Ford for this BS, and the American people deserve answers.
and what are the chances he ate 1 or 2 bacon n egg rolls in it .. OMG not halal FORD
In 1997, Robert Fisk interviewed Osama bin Laden in the mountains of Afghanistan, as described in his book The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East. But first, he had to get there.
And let me guess: his name is Streisand
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Alice wants something done and pays Bob to do it. Bob subcontract to Carol, who subcontracts to David. David doesn't do it or botches it. Alice is upset and sues Bob. Bob says "It isn't my fault, sue Carol instead". What happens?
What looks to me to be the sensible solution is that Bob petitions the court to have Carol added to the suit, but Bob can't be removed from the suit unless Alice agrees. Carol then has David added to the suit. Assuming that Alice wins, David is liable, but if he cannot or will not pay, Carol has to pick up the tab, and failing that Bob. Alice gets paid so long as Bob, Carol and David collectively can come up with the awarded penalty.
Does the law actually work like this? Alternatively, Alice sues Bob who has to pay. Then in a separate suit, Bob sues Carol for Bob's penalty plus legal costs. Then Carol sues David, by which time a decade has passed and legal costs have dwarfed Alice's original damage.
(In the case in hand, Alice is the plumber, the "something done" was removing the decals, Bob is the dealer Alice dealt with. The rest of the chain only occurs in this case if the exporter who the dealer sold to had some obligation to the dealer to remove the decals - probably not the case here.)
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
Its too old, a > 3 year old truck can't be imported into Turkey (where it supposedly was then exported to Syria):
http://movegroup.co.uk/TURKEY-IMPORT-REGULATIONS.html
"One car per family can be imported but is subject to substantial import duties/taxes. Car must be registered on the name of importer since 6 months in the Origin Country before incoming to Turkey and MUST NOT BE OLDER THAN 3 years (inclusive registration date and year of model) and must be used (no brand new)."
The story isn't true here. Worth deeper digging.
Wow, it's almost like the US government controls ISIS...
That reminds me of the guy in California named "Al Nino" who used to get hateful calls every time the weather forecasters started talking about how "El Nino" might ruin crops this year or whatever. Seriously, people would call him and curse him out for "fucking up the weather".
And also, there was that poor bastard named "Al Cayda", who's received a similar boatload of shit for the last decade or so.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Lookup AutoNation Ford Gulf Freeway on Google Maps and then look at the dealership in Street View. You might notice some 20+ large American flags along the side of their parking lot (and multiple smaller ones throughout the inside of the parking lot).
Does a dealership that will indirectly sell to ISIS to make a buck really need to misrepresent itself by using that many American flags?
innocents in Syria
We've already been told by all the people running for the GOP nomination to run for POTUS that there are no innocents in Syria, and roughly 30 US governors (including many who are not running for president) have said the same. Clearly, they must be right and samzenpus just did a shitty job of editing that last line.
You fail, "failure machine" samzenpus.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
LMAO Non paywalled link: Wade Hoyt, Toyota's spokesman in New York, who put the best corporate spin on the situation this week. "It is not our proudest product placement," he said. "But it shows that the Taliban are looking for the same qualities as any truck buyer: durability and reliability." http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11... http://www.bloombergview.com/a... Top Gear: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
He would have to prove his economic loss to the court but plaintiff is legally obliged to limit ecomomic loss so defendant argues plaintiff could take advantage of newfound popularity in Syria and relocate plumbing business there. Imagine the in field infomercials. Is it defendants fault that plaintiff won't answer door when opportunity knocks?
Mistakes:
1). Taking a car dealer, a used car dealer, at their word;
2). Thinking you have any rights after the vehicle sale. You have none!
3). Most used vehicle sales are performed "as is". Why would you think this was any different on the buyer side than you position as the seller?
Consider this a lesson in real world commerce. Next time remove your own decals and tell the dealer to F-off regarding his opinions and/or offers on the matter.
"I don't see how it is a so good question"
Look, we have a crap truck, its in Texas sold at auction, so far so believable.
It next appears in a photograph, on twitter from Caleb Weiss of "The Long War" journal, which says it featured in an ISIS video.
So I then want to verify the data in the story for plausibility and thus verify that its not just propaganda. ala 'weapons of mass destruction'.
Whenever I see bad guys dressed in black, or props (like a truck) that shouldn't be there, I always want to check it, and I expect to always be able to show a reasonable line of evidence. It's clear to me you don't understand shipping. Really this story isn't right and the shipping is just the tip of the problems.
I then search on "Foundation for the Defense of Democracies" the company behind "The Long War" on Sourcewatch and there's an issue with this group:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Talk:Foundation_for_the_Defense_of_Democracies
"The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD) is a neoconservative think tank aand lobbying organization that claims to conduct "research and education on international terrorism — the most serious security threat to the United States and other free, democratic nations. FDD produces independent analyses of global terrorist threats, as well as of the historical, cultural, philosophical and ideological factors that drive terrorism, and which threaten democracies and the individual freedoms guaranteed within democratic societies." Their work is closely linked with that of the National Endowment for Democracy.[1] FDD was created two days after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Ever since its creation, FDD has pushed for US wars against Iraq and Iran – Eli Clifton states that "In recent years, FDD has become one of the the premiere DC organizations promoting more aggressive actions against Iran."[2] Clifton adds:
"While FDD has a 10-year history of engaging in alarmist rhetoric and fear mongering — e.g. in 2002 FDD aired a series of ads conflating Osama bin Laden, Yasser Arafat and Saddam Hussein — and helped promote the “Bush doctrine” which led to the invasion of Iraq, its donors have, for the most part, hidden behind their anonymous contributions to the organization. The new documents should permit for greater scrutiny of the interests and individuals behind FDD’s hawkish presence in the Washington think tank world."[3]"
-----
Someone seems to want that page buried, its been challenged on weak specious grounds, but if anything that just makes me more suspicous of that source of information.
Answer: He wanted free advertisement from having his former truck driving around with it. It backfired. The End.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
The photo came from an online "Long War Journal" published by a pro-Israel neo-con foundation. "Foundation for the Defense of Democracies".
So the truck never left Texas, it was used to make the photograph, and then its likely been scrapped in Texas. I bet the purchase trail kicks up FDD.
This company:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundation_for_Defense_of_Democracies
Publishes this journal:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_War_Journal
As much as I normally find Colbert funny, he should realize how irresponsible it is to put someone and their family's life at risk.
Just another day in Paradise
>"I mean "sold at auction in Turkey"..what kind of a looney crackpot".
Sold at auction in *Texas* and shipped/imported into Turkey where it was exported and reimported to Syria where it was bought by Isis where it appeared in an ISIS video only seen by "Long War Journal" and only appears in a photo from them.
Or
"Long War Journal" simply bought a truck, made a photo in Texas and claimed it was an ISIS photo.
When you read up on the company behind the "Long War Journal" this is what they do, make propaganda to promote wars, so its pretty clear what actually happened here by Occams Razor:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundation_for_Defense_of_Democracies
"In 2011, ThinkProgress published FDD's Form 990 documents[33] that revealed where FDD funding came from, from 2001 to 2004. Donors included:[31]...."Most of the major donors are active philanthropists to 'pro-Israel' causes both in the U.S. and internationally. With the disclosure of its donor rolls, it becomes increasingly apparent that FDD’s advocacy of U.S. military intervention in the Middle East, its hawkish stance against Iran, and its defense of right-wing Israeli policy is consistent with its donors’ interests in 'pro-Israel' advocacy"."
She'd blame it all on YouTube and have the cops throw a YouTube video maker in jail for a year (somehow keeping him in there while they let out all sorts of offenders due to overcrowding)
Oh, and if you don't know she did this, then you get your news from a channel run by self-identified Democrats and with staff members who have relatives who work in the Obama administration (That would be ABC,CBS,NBC,PBS,CNN, and MSNBC). Our news media and the current administration are actually more incestuous than the family in "Deliverance"...
Itasha: shorthand for "italian sensha" but it came to mean a japanese car sporting some elaborate anime/manga themed paintjob or decal.
Pick-up with Garden of Sinners anime decal, sporting a dual 14,5mm heavy machine gun mount, flying the black ISIL flag:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CRSz8THUAAAp4TV.png
Touhu game / Ran Yakumo themed pick-up, complete with RPG-wielding daesh militants:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CT1xMZwU8AApUFO.png
Anyhow, don't worry about kawaii pick-ups. The USA has supplied over 2 thousand TOW-2A launch mounts and 11 thousand (!) corresponding anti-tank missile canisters to Saud and Quatar, who are forwarding these to Daesh, al-Nusra, etc. tenorist groups for use against the syrian government. There are now so many of these in militant hands that they are now using them against not just T-62/T-72 battle tanks but also any lesser targets, including excavators, jeeps and groups of half dozen people. (One TOW shot costs 300k USD, so in normal army doctrine these missiles are not expended on anything lesser target than a BMP.)
Regrettably the syrian army is so stupid, they consistently fail to apply basic anti-missileer doctrine, no matter how many of them end up killed. Their tanks and vehicles park in the open with engine turned off, their personnel congregate in the open and never care to look around, force protection is unheard of. This way, no matter how much Putin carpet bombs, the rule of Assad cannot be saved on the ground, because the average Syrian Arab Army foot soldier is dumber and bumblier than the average imperial stormtrooper. Only the iranian and Hezbollah troops are worth anything and the semi-independent anti-turkish kurds.
(Not that Daesh and Al-Nusra members are ninjas, as they also don't care if they die for the 40 virgin camels, Allahu Akbar willing they chant, but there are an almost infinite supply of them, from saudi prison death rows, so losses don't matter much.)
the current emissions tests in the area of the US where it was previously owned.
Every year, our eco-friendly laws require many thousands of perfectly functional motor vehicles be thrown away... but nothing requires that massive amounts of energy be used to recycle them, so they CAN get bought-up at a steep discount (essentially a huge tax on their owners who are often in the poorer part of the economy and must sell at a huge loss) then get loaded onto cargo ships and sold to poorer places on earth where they will go right on polluting. This makes sure that the emissions regulations do not actually remove pollutants from the atmosphere, they just shift the pollutants to places where the world's poorest live and usually at the expense of some of the poorest Americans.
The screenshot quite clearly states that a scene with a different group ("jaysh naseeri") is shown. But in the Slashdot summary, that quickly becomes ISIS. Not that this little thing would be a problem, and not in a story like this. But they add up and journalists can't just claim nation state's and other organisations' war propaganda is to blame. They're caryying the disease forward themselves as well.
By the way, the CIA mandates that every wire-guided TOW missile launch in Syria is to be filmed by the tenorist groups using 2 independent cameras. One shows the tripod missileer mount, including the act of launching from the canister and another cam shows the target before, during and after the attack. These videos are then uplinked onto YouTube using field-mobile sat comms gear (with celestian infrastructure also supplied by USA). There are now hundreds of TOW hit on Syrian Army themed videos on YT and considering the accuracy is rumored to be about 60%, there were further hundreds of TOW launches which missed and are not broadcast.
The whole rationale behind all this evil conspiracy is to destroy in a chaos all arab countires that surround the zionist entity or support the palestinian cause (Iraq, Lybia, Syria). As soon as ISIL/Al-Nusra/fake-moderate militants win and promptly start to fight each other, Merkava tanks can roll in to worldwide applause and crush them. Voila, the "Nile-to-Euphrates" Greater Israel is thereby created as depicted on the 10 agorot fractional coin of the new shekel and there is nobody to resist them. (Iran is far and will be A-bombed anyhow.) In this game, the USA is just a minion of Tel-Aviv.
Ah ! So in those hands does the "non lethal aid" to "moderates" in Syria ends up in to !
And maybe this video is made in Texas...
Shouldn't the Colbert Report share the blame in ruining this man's life and business? They should have stopped broadcasting the video after the first time.
CIA has to get its supplies somewhere and new trucks leave too much of an audit trail. Someone obviously forgot to remove the logo on this one.
Back in the 70s, Land Rover ran ads talking about how useful their cars were in Southeast Asia: you could mount the machine gun tripod on the front (for police use) or on the back (for smuggler use).
The thought of a Texas plumber setting up shop in a war zone makes me wonder... maybe the way to end the conflict is just for a bunch of peaceful people to stubbornly attempt to establish genteel neighbourhoods right in the middle of the fighting. If these bizarre settlers are persistent enough, it will be difficult for anyone to side with the fighters as the lure of civilisation tempts away less committed fighters. At the very least it might distract them from what they were originally fighting over and cause them to waste time bombing the golf courses and suburban bungalows that keep springing up around them.
Or maybe that's too "tit for tat", with the implication that "if you are going to infest my country with your twisted ideals, then I am going to infest your country with mine" and would therefore just add fuel to the fire.
I don't follow how it would make financial sense to take truck from TX and ship it to the middle east.
likely this truck has very high miles on it. It had been used as a plumbing truck and most of them get used to the point where they don't have a lot of usable life left in them. The sale price of it, probably is less or close to the the cost of shipping it overseas..
I would think for what would be spent in purchasing and shipping, a much better local truck could be acquired.
to me... something sounds a bit off with this...
What the fuck is this "news" doing in slashdot? Is slashdot really this shit nowdays?
ISIS is supporting american companies?
He thought he was selling the truck ASIS
You see it on MSNBC's commentary shows. Fox does it during their news shows. They were actually sued for this. It's not legal to pass commentary off as news. They successfully defended themselves by declaring they were not in fact a News Channel and were an entertainment network.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I never remember to call numbers i see on TV. Why cant i be that guy?
And when i traded in all of my cars, they said as-is. I had a duct-tape paint job on my hood. I'm pretty sure that one ended up in the desert.
BAH BAH BAH I want to know why the car dealer was not arrested for supplying arms to a known terrorists.