Odd or Notable News from the last two weeks
Compiled by Jay Shenk
If you are a swindler, you’re probably better staying in Massachusetts than trying your hand at cheating the elderly in Florida.
Mr. Darryl Rivernider’s luck seems to have run out in the Sunshine State, where he is currently in jail in Daytona, Florida with bail set at $445,000 (which might not even be allowed if the Daytona DA has his way), and facing 30 years in jail. Florida apparently takes swindling more seriously than Massachusetts—while operating Riverside Mitsubishi in Auburn, MA, he defrauded hundreds of customers out of hundreds of thousands of dollars, but no criminal charges were pursued. Instead, he was banned from selling cars in Massachusetts, which is perhaps one of the reasons he moved to Florida, where he again allegedly took up his preferred trade.
Allegedly, while in Florida Mr. Rivernider sold salvaged cars with fake CARFAX statements, set back odometers, and even cashed a 92 year old gentlemen’s check for nearly $20,000 after promising he would not (he got a second check for the same amount, and cashed that as well). He gained his victims’ trust by appearing to be a ‘nice, sincere’ man who was also quite religious, using phrases like “have a blessed day”. Perhaps he’ll now have time to really get religion while not enjoying his ‘retirement’ in Florida. Read more about this in the Worcester Telegram.
In another example of justice in Massachusetts, all charges were dropped against Carmello Andujar, who had been indicted in 2008 on 30 firearms and drug charges. These charges were the result of a raid in 2007 which resulted in the confiscation of heroin, cocaine, an assault rifle, a bullet proof vest, other weapons, and more. Judge McCann from Worcester Superior Court threw out all evidence obtained in the raid, including statements by Mr. Andujar, because the warrant wasn’t specific enough regarding which of the five garages was to be searched—it was apparently an apartment building and there are five garages—and the raid was executed 25 minutes prior to the warrant for his arrest having been formally issued. As Judge McCann said in his ruling, “Accordingly, the search warrant for 507 Main Street was invalid and all evidence and statements obtained pursuant to the execution of the search warrant must be suppressed as poisonous fruits.” Again, the complete story can be read on the Telegram website (free for 14 days).
A truck’s load shifted, the back doors fell open, and bread and bagels spilled all over Route 20 near Charlton, shutting down traffic for nearly 2 hours. Read More
New Credit Card rules take effect
After over a year of work revising the rules on credit cards to protect consumers, we’ve got a lukewarm, fairly pointless law that should have been done in about a month and could have accomplished a lot more. From my perspective, the only thing I got out of this law was a canceled credit card, because when we signed up for it the credit card company promised to never charge an annual fee, so now the card is no longer profitable for the bank, so we have no fee but no card either.
Some parts of the law are good. For instance, the statement will now tell the customer how long it will take to pay off the balance if only the minimum payments are made, which in most cases is a real long time—for instance, 10 years to pay off a $3,000 balance. Other good aspects include:
• Over the limit fees—currently credit card companies allow you to exceed your credit limit, and then charge you a fee for going over the limit. This in itself isn’t so bad, except that if you are close to the limit, the bank might hit you with other fees, say for late payments, and that fee itself puts you over the limit, triggering a second fee. The new law requires customers to agree to allow transactions that put them over their credit limit to be processed (as opposed to being rejected), and over the limit fees can no longer be triggered by other fees the credit card companies impose. These fees can also be charged just once in a billing cycle.
Most other parts are good, but just barely, since they do so little to rein in credit card abuses. A few examples:
• Service (i.e. annual) fees—there used to be no cap on what could be charged. Now it’s capped for the first year, but at 25% of the credit limit (it you have a $10,000 credit limit, they can ‘only’ charge you $2,500). I’ll bet that has the credit card companies quaking in their boots. After the first year, there is no cap.
• Interest rates—currently banks can raise rates at any time, regardless of whether the account is past due. Now, for the first year banks can only raise the rate in the case of ‘introductory rates’ that expire, but after the first year they can raise the rates after giving 45 days advance notice. There is no upper limit to what interest rate can be charged.
• Interest on existing balances—this one is a little stronger, but has the unintended consequence of driving up initial interest rates. The new rule is that banks cannot raise your interest rate on money you already owe unless you are 60 days past due, in which case they can do whatever they want. If you get back on track for six months, the rate must revert back to the original rate.
The unintended consequence here is that the banks are being told they have to issue fixed rate rather than variable rate loans, and fixed rates are always at a higher interest rate—compare a fixed rate to a variable rate mortgage.
So even though we’ll hear plenty of bragging about this law from politicians, there really isn’t much to brag about. I would feel this law wasn’t as massaged by special interests if there were an interest rate cap. 32% interest rates, even before all the ridiculous fees, are simply outrageous and impossible for most people to pay off. The banks' argument is that an interest rate cap would limit who could get credit cards, but my opinion is that if your credit is so bad you have to pay 32% interest, you’d do better finding a loan shark. Plus, if you can only qualify for a 32% interest rate (which after all the fees will be around 40%), you shouldn’t be borrowing as you’ll never pay it off and just get deeper in debt. A much cleaner law, which would limit the maximum effective interest rate to X% above prime and fees to some set total amount, would have been much simpler, easier to enforce, and more effective.
Great Skiing and Snowboarding at the Olympics, Plus lots of Ads
This Olympics got off to a tragic start, with the death of a young Luge competitor, and also suffered from a lack of snow but no lack of administrative foul ups, but once it got rolling, we saw some great competition in sports I enjoy watching—snowboarding and skiing. After watching Shaun White perform on the half pipe, I’m convinced that snowboarding is a legitimate Olympic sport, and definitely one that’s exciting to watch. Plus, Shaun White was literally head and shoulders above the competition.
Then, Bode Miller won three ski racing medals for the US (so far—the Olympics aren’t over yet), including the gold in the men’s super combined, and he was gracious and likeable about it. This was in contrast to his last Olympic appearance at Turin, when he won no medals but did plenty of late night partying while putting down the Olympics and the US Ski Team.
The only downside to the Olympics is that there are a whole lot of commercials. In fact, there are more commercials than action in the NBC broadcast. Here’s how it broke down, per the Wall Street Journal, for 3-1/2 hours on the evening of Friday the 19th:
Commercials: 56.41 minutes, or 27% of the air time.
Action: 53.37 minutes, or 25.5% of the air time.
Bob Costas talking: 17.19 minutes, or 8.2% of the air time.
Replays: 10.26 minutes, or 5% of the air time.
Video Segments: 10.3 minutes or 4.9% of the air time.
My suggestion—watch the Olympics on On Demand. It’s free and you can pick what sport to watch, and best of all, there are no commercials.