Legal Question in Credit and Debt Law in Virginia

Re: auto delinquency resulting in criminal charges?

From the facts you descibe, I am baffled at why there would be any criminal charges involved. I am assuming that there must be an outstanding unpaid balance that is due. However, that would be a simple matter of an unpaid debt.

If an attorney is involved for the lender, it is a violation of the rules governing attorneys to threaten criminal prosecution as a way to collect a civil debt. Any attorney who threatens that can be disciplined or even disbarred. I don't know at this point if any attorney is involved. I believe this also may be a violation of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act.

However, it can only make things worse if your friend continues to avoid the situation. If the lender is trying to argue that he is hiding the car from them or something like that, the longer he hides from them, the worse it looks.

On the other hand, repossession is a legal scam. The car will be sold for only a small fraction of the value, and your friend will still be required to pay nearly all of the loan. The credit from the sale of the car will be very, very small, and will not help much at all in paying off the loan.

His best option is to make any payments that are due (paying by money order so that the lender cannot see where his bank account is). They cannot complain if all the payments have been made.

His second best option is to advertise the car for sale and find a buyer. Probably he will not be able to complete the sale without the lender signing off on the sale, if they hold title. But he should come to the lender with a buyer already arranged, send a letter by certified mail, proving that it is possible to sell the car for $X, because he has found a buyer ready to buy it for $X. Then, if they sell the car at auction and get a tiny amount for the car, he must raise the defense in court of the lender's "failure to mitigate damages." That is, they could have received $X by selling the car to the buyer he found, so they cannot recover any more than what they would have lost if they had accepted that deal.