Confessions of a Straw Buyer

How I Bought Millions of Dollars’ Worth of Luxury Cars and Got Blacklisted by Jaguar Land Rover, Mercedes, and Porsche

If you’ve spent more than a year in auto collections, repossessions or lending, you’ve doubtlessly encountered “straw buyers.” While most of these are of the “girlfriend signs for boyfriend” garden variety, there are the pros. Signing for luxury cars destined for China and earning fat commissions may sound exciting and lucrative, a 2018 Car and Driver article by confessed straw buyer Roy Ritchie, paints a very different picture.

In the 2018 article, Roy, assuming that is the confessed straw buyer’s name, alleges himself to have been an unemployed ex-con from Georgia prone to day drinking “Ten High” when he got dragged into his first straw purchase of a Porsche Cayenne in 2013.

From there, he went on to working for an exporter in San Diego who fronted the money for the vehicles in form of cashier’s checks. While he makes no mention of taking out loans, it’s not hard to believe that there was some element of loan fraud involved that he wasn’t being up front about.

His story goes on to illuminate just how deep the Chinese auto import gray market is and how the dealerships and auto manufacturers guarded against these exports to protect their own market profits in China.

But before anyone gets some hair brained idea that they could make a good living at this, as income goes, he states; “A single car can earn a straw buyer anywhere from $500 to $7000 in commission. It’s enough to take the kids to Disneyland but nothing you can build a career on.”

From waking up hungover on a airport bench with a half-eaten moon pie stuck to his shirt to using his mother to buy cars when his name got blacklisted, he shares some very interesting insight into this murky underground industry and is definitely a worthy read.