TAMPA, Florida— Better Call Behnken is producing positive results for a former client of a vehicle dealership that specialized in helping customers improve their credit but has since closed its doors.
Kathania Ramirez is very happy with the Kia SUV that she purchased back in January. A month later, the dealership known as American Car Center went out of business; however, she continued to make payments to the firm that had purchased the dealership’s assets.
Everything was going smoothly up until the beginning of this month when she realized that her tag had expired and she had to call the DMV to renew it.
She was informed that she would be required to pay $1,500 in liens that were in the name of another person.
“He comes back, and he says, ‘I see two liens under your name,'” Ramirez recalls him saying at the time.
It turned out that the license plate number that American Car Center had allocated to her was the one that was liable for the over $1,500 in liens, rather than her name. And that phone number was registered to the name of another person.
“For me, in general, it’s been frustrating because you don’t really know why the company closed, but then you go to register your tag, and you have all these issues,” she said. “For the most part, though, it’s been frustrating.”
The American Car Center marketed itself as the “King of Credit” and specialized in the “lease to own” model of financing. West Lake Portfolio Management acquired all of the company’s property when it filed for liquidation under Chapter 7 of the bankruptcy code.
The investigation was started by Investigator Shannon Behnken, who contacted the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles for assistance with Ramirez. On the same day, the liens were removed, and she was issued a new tag as well as a new registration that was brought up to date.
“I feel like if I wouldn’t it would have probably been July and they still would have been saying I owed a lien that wasn’t mine,” she added. “I feel like if I wouldn’t it would have probably been July.”
