[Video Link] A couple of creeps -- Vincent Cardinalli, 67, and his son Paul Greer, 33 -- who ran a towing scam involving 2,000 small claims lawsuits, dozens of counts of fraud, perjury, and extortion were recently put behind bars.
Though Cardinalli and Greer hadn't towed a car in years - they operated separate companies - they were awarded $232,000 in judgments over an 18-month period ending in August 2006. Those awards represented 111 cases - less than a quarter of the cases they filed in the Santa Clara County. And when defendants didn't pay, the duo marshaled the power and blessings of the small claims court to raid bank accounts, garnish paychecks and arrest elusive defendants.
It turns out the tow truck drivers appear to have been in cahoots with a San Jose court commissioner, Gregory Saldivar.
I never paid much attention to towing companies until I read Tom Wolfe's novel A Man in Full, which has a bit about a hapless fellow who gets into a conflict with a jackass tow truck operator and ends up in jail. Ever since, I've noticed quite a few stories in the news involving shady tow truck companies.
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“we’ve been waiting for you” – How can something like this require an outside citizen to put a stop to it? How many people just watched as all of these documents passed through their hands, waiting for someone else to do the right thing.
“Yo, ho, tow them away / The Lincoln Park Pirates are we…!”
— Popular song in Chicago thirty years ago. Major corruption in towing there, got an 18-year-old booth attendant shot and killed by an irate customer.
At least Chicago towing companies actually tow cars. To be fair, most of them are legally parked…
Wow, I never would have thought I’d be beaten to the Steve Goodman reference. Nice!
The judge asleep at the switch? Doesn’t it seem more likely that he was getting kickbacks?
When I worked at a gas station a few years back, I had a tow truck towed from our lot. It was a glorious moment of triumph.
“I had a tow truck towed from our lot.”
Are you, by chance, the Malfunction Junction guy? Because if you are, I need to slap you continuously until you start that back up.
It is _absolutely_ a scummy business. I have a relative whose truck was towed and after the vehicle was reclaimed, it was discovered that it had been seriously damaged when it was taken. The tow truck driver lifted it too high and it struck the ceiling of the parking structure it was taken from. The tow truck company denied all responsibility, called my relative an out-and-out liar, and produced ‘witnesses’ that were prepared to say the same even despite considerable obvious proof of what had happened, both on the truck and in the concrete of the parking structure.
My relative dropped the case and got the truck fixed on his own. He just had no recourse. Highly scummy, completely utterly unethical, basically criminals with a license to cheat and steal.
Tow truck operators are kind of like guys with a moving van. If somebody sees a tow truck grabbing a car off the street, the assumption is made that it’s being done legally, even though it could simply be the equivalent of a guy with a slim jim. And then there’re impound lots, where you have to pay the fee for the car BEFORE you see it. A lot of people don’t get a car that looks nearly as nice as the one that got put in there in the first place.
Of course, there’re plenty of legitimate operators out there too, and a lot of these folks get the joy of dealing with rude, irate people all day long. It’s a shame the scammers give the good ones such a bad name, merely by association.
Tow truck operators are kind of like guys with a moving van. If somebody sees a tow truck grabbing a car off the street, the assumption is made that it’s being done legally, even though it could simply be the equivalent of a guy with a slim jim.
It’s kind of scary to think about how many “loopholes” there are built into our various systems. The right kind of van or box truck, plus an orange reflective vest and maybe some traffic cones, and there’s pretty much nowhere you can’t park, no bike you can’t steal, no traffic light you can’t modify to beam out your hypnotic signal… I don’t mention it because OMG WHAT IF TERROR? but it is amazing what we choose to ignore if we’ve been conditioned the right way.
Also, I can’t remember where, but I saw a similar story where they had a “scummy tow-guy comes clean” angle. Essentially, he said, suppose you have to decide where to put your impound lot. You can either pay $100,000 for a plot of land on the outskirts of town, or you can pay $300,000 for a lot located between a strip club and an abandoned warehouse, across from a public housing project. Which do you pick? The one that the BMW owner will pay any amount of money to get away from as fast as possible, never mind how obviously scammy you are. (“There’s a 10% credit card fee. Oh, now you want to pay in cash? No problem, there’s an ATM at the strip club.”)
City Tow, now so happily re-branded as Auto Return, is proof-positive that evil is a cash-rich business.
Their vile, unholy union with the City of San Francisco gives new meanings to the words “corruption” and “fuckpuppets.”
Delightful ambiance in the City Tow office… Their clerks sit behind three inches of bullet proof glass smeared with dried spit.
(the glass is smeared, not the clerks, because there is no justice in the world)
My car was nearly totaled a few years back while I was in a neighborhood I’d never been to before. The tow truck company that showed up (really quickly) after I called the cops/insurance were really friendly, very nice and turned out to be total scam artists.
Turned out, they weren’t sent by the city or insurance company, they just rode the police scanner and dispatched trucks to scoop up cars.
The fun part came when my insurance company called me and asked if I’d authorized a $900 tow half-way across Chicagoland to some far-flung suburban scrapyard. That plus “storage fee” put their bill near two grand.
I say this was fun, because my insurance company (State Farm) was more than hip to these bozos and my agent actually giggled saying “Oh, we’re not going to pay a dime of that and they’re going to bag and tag everything in that car and issue you an apology for any inconvenience.”
Which is exactly what happened.
Their entire business model is breaking into and taking vehicles that aren’t PARKED correctly. Obviously it’s a scummy business.
My wife, when she did volunteer work counseling women who were admitted to the hospital due to suspected domestic violence, met with a Somali woman who had been seriously beaten by tow truck drivers. I have never heard anything good about these people.
This brings back (notso) fond fond memories of the night Lincoln Towing (Chicago) scumbags intentionally falsely arrested three innocent people as punishment for a demonstration-lite, sparked when their drivers towed in hundreds of cars & packed their lot so tight nobody could get a car out (and continued to pack ’em in every time the cops left). Yup, that was the night the quiet girl from Wisconsin met the kindly folk at Cook County women’s lockup who thoughtfully confiscated my shoelaces, offered me a turkey sandwich on whitebread, and let me learn the hard way that drinking water and toilet flushing water come from the same pipes in a holding cell. For the record, toilet flushes in lockup at 3am on a saturday night are really really loud–and not much appreciated by sleeping cellmates. The followup court appearance was a complete sham. Lincoln Towing and Cook County–I want my $1000.
I would imagine your chances of getting caught after throwing a brick through a tow truck windshield are less than the chances of getting caught for filing fraudulent lawsuits, which is to say you could probably get away with it a thousands of times before anyone noticed.
Just as a thought experiment in statistics.
Something like that has been going on close to here in Lake Dallas, TX:
So, I once NEEDED a tow truck when we were in a hit and run in wyoming (other person did the hitting). AAA called one for us, and while they got there promptly, they thought the appropriate solution was to drop us off at a diner in the middle of nowhere, on a saturday. After 3 hours, and numerous complaints to AAA, they returned to drive us to the nearest big-ish city in WY, where a rental car was reserved for us (again by AAA). Unfortunately, it was a Saturday and by the time they got us there the rental car agency was closed until Monday.
After more complaints to AAA, they offered to pay are room for the night and we were able to get a friend to pick us up the next day (which was especially considerate since they had to drive 3 hours).
TLDR: AAA rocks, and I hope an awful WY tow company lost AAA business and went under.
Towing is a perfect example of a fascist enterprise: the power of the state combined with private gain.
Without state power, the whole industry wouldn’t exist.
You have to love California jurisprudence.
Cardinalli was convicted after pleading no contest to 99 felony counts of fraud. Over the years, he was awarded more than $1 million by a small claims court commissioner [Gregory Saldivar] who sided with him in all but two of the fraudulent suits.
(From an AP news story on January 9, 2011; emphasis mine.)
It’s not as if the questionable link between Saldivar and the Cardinallis only recently came to light:
“The arguments are patently absurd, and unfortunately for everyone else, they’ve found a commissioner who hasn’t taken the time to look into the law and get it right,” Adler said, referring to Santa Clara County Small Claims Commissioner Gregory Saldivar, who has served 16 years.
(From an article in the Hollister Free Lance on January 31, 2007.)
The earliest red flags, in fact, are now probably only pale pink, they date from so long ago:
Santa Clara County’s traffic court has taken the concept of plea bargains to a new plateau. Plea fire sales is more like it. It’s justice by whim in traffic court, where one commissioner [Gregory Saldivar] lets scofflaws off by paying just one parking ticket in five[…]. That means the county loses who knows how many thousands of dollars a year[…].
(From a [pay-walled] San Jose Mercury-News editorial on September 9, 1992.)
It appears Santa Clara County managed to dodge a potentially far larger bullet at least twice in the past 15 years, though, when voters declined to elect Saldivar to fill judicial vacancies — despite being saddled with a third-rate Fourth Estate:
Commissioner Gregory Saldivar, who by most accounts has been a reliable and hard-working member of the criminal justice system for the past 16 years…
(From the Morgan Hill Times editorial of January 21, 2011, Mark cited; emphasis mine. Here’s another great testimonial to the reliability and work-ethic displayed by Gregory Saldivar in his, um, 21 years as commissioner.)
Lincoln Park Pirates
Video got ganked. Its like someone who knows that they’re evil doesn’t want other people to see it for some reason…
I had my car towed by a scummy tow company once in Southern California. I parked in the parking lot of a department store that was out of business – so no one was going to be using the lot – because the parking lot for the tiny strip mall across the street where I was meeting some friends was completely full.
Anyway, as I was leaving the restaurant across the street, I saw two Mexican dudes with a tow-truck loading up my car. I ran across the four-lane street through the traffic and started yelling at them, naturally.
They seemed to realize that they were being scummy, and tried to avoid talking to me as much as possible. They said to show them the registration and they’d let me drive away. I showed them the registration, but it was registered to my mom (same last name), with out-of-state plates, as she’d recently given me the car and I hadn’t transferred to CA plates. No deal, they were going to take the car! Nevermind that I had the keys and that it was obviously my car…
I realized later (after I went to the police station at 4 AM to ask if there was anything I could do about it) that if I had just sat in the car and called the police, they would have unloaded the car and gotten away as quickly as possible. I would have told the police some dudes were stealing my car out from under me, making sure that the tow truck guys heard me.
Unlikely that I’ll ever manage to both get towed and come out just as it’s happening again, but I know what to do in case it happens :)
By the way, standing in a dark parking lot around midnight, miles from home, watching some assholes tow my car into the darkness – knowing I might never see it again, really – was one of the worst feelings I’ve had in my life! My friends had already left a couple minutes before I did, as I stayed to use the bathroom.
one of my favorite oxymorons: reputable towing company
“This video has been removed by the user.
Sorry about that.”
My brother is a policeman in a city near Boston. Whenever we are riding through town together on errands and such, he’ll casually point out the guys and gals he sees who are ex-cons, on probation, career criminals and such.
While the various neighborhoods and businesses have their share of hoods, it is absolutely amazing how many of them are tow truck drivers. In fact, nearly every tow truck driver we’ve seen in this city over the past few years will get from my bro a derisive snort and a retelling of the guy’s rap sheet, which tend to be long and ugly.
“They’re the only guys willing to do it”, he once shrugged, “and the business was made for ’em. Scumbags, every one of ’em.”
Worst thing to him is that he has to work with them at every accident, and every snow emergency. Guys he and his fellow cops have arrested multiple times, and would just as soon throw in the klink again before they beat up a stranger or a girlfriend. Not fun. But, that’s the way it is.
Working link:
I think its the same show.
There are parking lots in Hollywood that I think their entire purpose is for shady tow truck drivers to get extortion money from people.
I parked in a lot, not labled with any sign that I could see, only to come out and my car was up on the truck and they were demanding 200 bucks from me. Suddenly there was a sign. Prominent saying “No Parking”
It was put up with zip ties.
And it was my birthday :(
Anyhow, I ran to an ATM, paid them 200 bucks and drove home very furiously.
My housemate had his car stolen. a week later, the police called: it had been recovered, apparently it was just a joyride, and they found the car abandoned.
He was charged for the tow and the storage at the impound lot.
Hey, I’m only a day & a half late reading this, but here’s a story…
A couple of years ago, I was driving north on I-5 through the Central Valley. A couple of hundred miles north of LA, a strange & dangerous thing started happening.
I-5 is two lanes each way, with many slow trucks to the right, being passed by the faster traffic on the left. Suddenly, the left lane would slow from 70-80 mph to maybe 30 or 40, causing everybody to jam on their brakes. There was a culprit — a car that would speed up to a slow-moving truck as if to pass, then screech on its brakes. Many near crashes ensued, with people spinning out into the shoulder to avoid contact. Then the culprit would floor it, speeding way up again… until a mile or two later, when it would pull the same trick. It was dangerous, and scary as hell.
This went on for many, many miles. After a while, I had spotted the guy who was doing this, and kept watching him. Somewhere up around Tracy, CA, that car took an offramp. Waiting at the bottom of the ramp was a tow truck. I could see the guy in the car gesturing to him: Nope, not that time! They had a short conversation, then the car crossed over the freeway and got back on in the southbound direction, I’m sure to do the same thing. I have no doubt he was in cahoots with the local tow truck guys, trying to cause collisions so they could get work.
Has anybody else ever encountered anything like this?
Nothing But Trouble!
(obscure but relevant movie reference…)
Its a scummy business.
“we’ve been waiting for you” – How can something like this require an outside citizen to put a stop to it? How many people just watched as all of these documents passed through their hands, waiting for someone else to do the right thing.
“Yo, ho, tow them away / The Lincoln Park Pirates are we…!”
— Popular song in Chicago thirty years ago. Major corruption in towing there, got an 18-year-old booth attendant shot and killed by an irate customer.
At least Chicago towing companies actually tow cars. To be fair, most of them are legally parked…
Wow, I never would have thought I’d be beaten to the Steve Goodman reference. Nice!
The judge asleep at the switch? Doesn’t it seem more likely that he was getting kickbacks?
Just another day in Philadelphia.
http://www.philadelphiaweekly.com/news-and-opinion/cover-story/Towing-the-Line.html
When I worked at a gas station a few years back, I had a tow truck towed from our lot. It was a glorious moment of triumph.
“I had a tow truck towed from our lot.”
Are you, by chance, the Malfunction Junction guy? Because if you are, I need to slap you continuously until you start that back up.
It is _absolutely_ a scummy business. I have a relative whose truck was towed and after the vehicle was reclaimed, it was discovered that it had been seriously damaged when it was taken. The tow truck driver lifted it too high and it struck the ceiling of the parking structure it was taken from. The tow truck company denied all responsibility, called my relative an out-and-out liar, and produced ‘witnesses’ that were prepared to say the same even despite considerable obvious proof of what had happened, both on the truck and in the concrete of the parking structure.
My relative dropped the case and got the truck fixed on his own. He just had no recourse. Highly scummy, completely utterly unethical, basically criminals with a license to cheat and steal.
Tow truck operators are kind of like guys with a moving van. If somebody sees a tow truck grabbing a car off the street, the assumption is made that it’s being done legally, even though it could simply be the equivalent of a guy with a slim jim. And then there’re impound lots, where you have to pay the fee for the car BEFORE you see it. A lot of people don’t get a car that looks nearly as nice as the one that got put in there in the first place.
Of course, there’re plenty of legitimate operators out there too, and a lot of these folks get the joy of dealing with rude, irate people all day long. It’s a shame the scammers give the good ones such a bad name, merely by association.
It’s kind of scary to think about how many “loopholes” there are built into our various systems. The right kind of van or box truck, plus an orange reflective vest and maybe some traffic cones, and there’s pretty much nowhere you can’t park, no bike you can’t steal, no traffic light you can’t modify to beam out your hypnotic signal… I don’t mention it because OMG WHAT IF TERROR? but it is amazing what we choose to ignore if we’ve been conditioned the right way.
Also, I can’t remember where, but I saw a similar story where they had a “scummy tow-guy comes clean” angle. Essentially, he said, suppose you have to decide where to put your impound lot. You can either pay $100,000 for a plot of land on the outskirts of town, or you can pay $300,000 for a lot located between a strip club and an abandoned warehouse, across from a public housing project. Which do you pick? The one that the BMW owner will pay any amount of money to get away from as fast as possible, never mind how obviously scammy you are. (“There’s a 10% credit card fee. Oh, now you want to pay in cash? No problem, there’s an ATM at the strip club.”)
City Tow, now so happily re-branded as Auto Return, is proof-positive that evil is a cash-rich business.
Their vile, unholy union with the City of San Francisco gives new meanings to the words “corruption” and “fuckpuppets.”
Delightful ambiance in the City Tow office… Their clerks sit behind three inches of bullet proof glass smeared with dried spit.
(the glass is smeared, not the clerks, because there is no justice in the world)
My car was nearly totaled a few years back while I was in a neighborhood I’d never been to before. The tow truck company that showed up (really quickly) after I called the cops/insurance were really friendly, very nice and turned out to be total scam artists.
Turned out, they weren’t sent by the city or insurance company, they just rode the police scanner and dispatched trucks to scoop up cars.
The fun part came when my insurance company called me and asked if I’d authorized a $900 tow half-way across Chicagoland to some far-flung suburban scrapyard. That plus “storage fee” put their bill near two grand.
I say this was fun, because my insurance company (State Farm) was more than hip to these bozos and my agent actually giggled saying “Oh, we’re not going to pay a dime of that and they’re going to bag and tag everything in that car and issue you an apology for any inconvenience.”
Which is exactly what happened.
Their entire business model is breaking into and taking vehicles that aren’t PARKED correctly. Obviously it’s a scummy business.
My wife, when she did volunteer work counseling women who were admitted to the hospital due to suspected domestic violence, met with a Somali woman who had been seriously beaten by tow truck drivers. I have never heard anything good about these people.
This brings back (notso) fond fond memories of the night Lincoln Towing (Chicago) scumbags intentionally falsely arrested three innocent people as punishment for a demonstration-lite, sparked when their drivers towed in hundreds of cars & packed their lot so tight nobody could get a car out (and continued to pack ’em in every time the cops left). Yup, that was the night the quiet girl from Wisconsin met the kindly folk at Cook County women’s lockup who thoughtfully confiscated my shoelaces, offered me a turkey sandwich on whitebread, and let me learn the hard way that drinking water and toilet flushing water come from the same pipes in a holding cell. For the record, toilet flushes in lockup at 3am on a saturday night are really really loud–and not much appreciated by sleeping cellmates. The followup court appearance was a complete sham. Lincoln Towing and Cook County–I want my $1000.
I would imagine your chances of getting caught after throwing a brick through a tow truck windshield are less than the chances of getting caught for filing fraudulent lawsuits, which is to say you could probably get away with it a thousands of times before anyone noticed.
Just as a thought experiment in statistics.
Something like that has been going on close to here in Lake Dallas, TX:
http://www.dentonrc.com/sharedcontent/dws/drc/localnews/stories/DRC_Towing_Investigation_Part_I_1024.1bd935b0d.html
So, I once NEEDED a tow truck when we were in a hit and run in wyoming (other person did the hitting). AAA called one for us, and while they got there promptly, they thought the appropriate solution was to drop us off at a diner in the middle of nowhere, on a saturday. After 3 hours, and numerous complaints to AAA, they returned to drive us to the nearest big-ish city in WY, where a rental car was reserved for us (again by AAA). Unfortunately, it was a Saturday and by the time they got us there the rental car agency was closed until Monday.
After more complaints to AAA, they offered to pay are room for the night and we were able to get a friend to pick us up the next day (which was especially considerate since they had to drive 3 hours).
TLDR: AAA rocks, and I hope an awful WY tow company lost AAA business and went under.
Fresh Video link:
http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local-beat/The_Perfect_Scam__in_a_Tow_Truck_Bay_Area-116252899.html
Towing is a perfect example of a fascist enterprise: the power of the state combined with private gain.
Without state power, the whole industry wouldn’t exist.
You have to love California jurisprudence.
(From an AP news story on January 9, 2011; emphasis mine.)
It’s not as if the questionable link between Saldivar and the Cardinallis only recently came to light:
(From an article in the Hollister Free Lance on January 31, 2007.)
The earliest red flags, in fact, are now probably only pale pink, they date from so long ago:
(From a [pay-walled] San Jose Mercury-News editorial on September 9, 1992.)
It appears Santa Clara County managed to dodge a potentially far larger bullet at least twice in the past 15 years, though, when voters declined to elect Saldivar to fill judicial vacancies — despite being saddled with a third-rate Fourth Estate:
(From the Morgan Hill Times editorial of January 21, 2011, Mark cited; emphasis mine. Here’s another great testimonial to the reliability and work-ethic displayed by Gregory Saldivar in his, um, 21 years as commissioner.)
Lincoln Park Pirates
Video got ganked. Its like someone who knows that they’re evil doesn’t want other people to see it for some reason…
I had my car towed by a scummy tow company once in Southern California. I parked in the parking lot of a department store that was out of business – so no one was going to be using the lot – because the parking lot for the tiny strip mall across the street where I was meeting some friends was completely full.
Anyway, as I was leaving the restaurant across the street, I saw two Mexican dudes with a tow-truck loading up my car. I ran across the four-lane street through the traffic and started yelling at them, naturally.
They seemed to realize that they were being scummy, and tried to avoid talking to me as much as possible. They said to show them the registration and they’d let me drive away. I showed them the registration, but it was registered to my mom (same last name), with out-of-state plates, as she’d recently given me the car and I hadn’t transferred to CA plates. No deal, they were going to take the car! Nevermind that I had the keys and that it was obviously my car…
I realized later (after I went to the police station at 4 AM to ask if there was anything I could do about it) that if I had just sat in the car and called the police, they would have unloaded the car and gotten away as quickly as possible. I would have told the police some dudes were stealing my car out from under me, making sure that the tow truck guys heard me.
Unlikely that I’ll ever manage to both get towed and come out just as it’s happening again, but I know what to do in case it happens :)
By the way, standing in a dark parking lot around midnight, miles from home, watching some assholes tow my car into the darkness – knowing I might never see it again, really – was one of the worst feelings I’ve had in my life! My friends had already left a couple minutes before I did, as I stayed to use the bathroom.
one of my favorite oxymorons: reputable towing company
“This video has been removed by the user.
Sorry about that.”
My brother is a policeman in a city near Boston. Whenever we are riding through town together on errands and such, he’ll casually point out the guys and gals he sees who are ex-cons, on probation, career criminals and such.
While the various neighborhoods and businesses have their share of hoods, it is absolutely amazing how many of them are tow truck drivers. In fact, nearly every tow truck driver we’ve seen in this city over the past few years will get from my bro a derisive snort and a retelling of the guy’s rap sheet, which tend to be long and ugly.
“They’re the only guys willing to do it”, he once shrugged, “and the business was made for ’em. Scumbags, every one of ’em.”
Worst thing to him is that he has to work with them at every accident, and every snow emergency. Guys he and his fellow cops have arrested multiple times, and would just as soon throw in the klink again before they beat up a stranger or a girlfriend. Not fun. But, that’s the way it is.
Working link:
I think its the same show.
There are parking lots in Hollywood that I think their entire purpose is for shady tow truck drivers to get extortion money from people.
I parked in a lot, not labled with any sign that I could see, only to come out and my car was up on the truck and they were demanding 200 bucks from me. Suddenly there was a sign. Prominent saying “No Parking”
It was put up with zip ties.
And it was my birthday :(
Anyhow, I ran to an ATM, paid them 200 bucks and drove home very furiously.
My housemate had his car stolen. a week later, the police called: it had been recovered, apparently it was just a joyride, and they found the car abandoned.
He was charged for the tow and the storage at the impound lot.
Hey, I’m only a day & a half late reading this, but here’s a story…
A couple of years ago, I was driving north on I-5 through the Central Valley. A couple of hundred miles north of LA, a strange & dangerous thing started happening.
I-5 is two lanes each way, with many slow trucks to the right, being passed by the faster traffic on the left. Suddenly, the left lane would slow from 70-80 mph to maybe 30 or 40, causing everybody to jam on their brakes. There was a culprit — a car that would speed up to a slow-moving truck as if to pass, then screech on its brakes. Many near crashes ensued, with people spinning out into the shoulder to avoid contact. Then the culprit would floor it, speeding way up again… until a mile or two later, when it would pull the same trick. It was dangerous, and scary as hell.
This went on for many, many miles. After a while, I had spotted the guy who was doing this, and kept watching him. Somewhere up around Tracy, CA, that car took an offramp. Waiting at the bottom of the ramp was a tow truck. I could see the guy in the car gesturing to him: Nope, not that time! They had a short conversation, then the car crossed over the freeway and got back on in the southbound direction, I’m sure to do the same thing. I have no doubt he was in cahoots with the local tow truck guys, trying to cause collisions so they could get work.
Has anybody else ever encountered anything like this?