Banned car trader has had enough
A notorious Auckland car dealer who calls himself the ‘‘Wolf of Church Street’’ has promised to pay back his string of victims but they don’t believe him.
Antony Basturkmen, who has legally changed his name to Brent Smith but still goes by Basturkmen, was the owner of a Auckland car dealership called Motor Me, that was taken to the Motor Vehicle Disputes Tribunal at least 18 times.
Motor Me was warned by the Commerce Commission in January last year for misleading consumers, and later in the year was banned from trading by government agency Trading Standards.
Trade Me has also banned Smith from trading on its site.
Yet last month Smith was found trading cars on Facebook.
He said it was his way of getting rid of the four cars he had left over to ‘‘raise funds’’ to pay back the customers who took him to the tribunal.
While he had not contacted any of the victims, he said: ‘‘All the people will be paid back within six months.’’
He said all the money from selling the cars after Motor Me shut was paid to a finance company. Smith would not say what the company’s debt was.
Euna Go and partner Ben Thomas were sold a noisy smoking car and she does not believe Smith will keep his promise. ‘‘That’s b...s...,’’ Go said. ‘‘I’m very sceptical of anything he says. He still owns a house. So if he really wanted to pay us, he could sell his house and pay us our money.’’
Smith and his wife and codirector, Alexis Basturkmen, live in a house worth about $2.15 million in Auckland.
After the Commerce Commission’s warning, he decided to shut down Motor Me but had more than 550 cars to get rid of.
‘‘We had to get rid of them one way or another. We had to use other people to sell our vehicles for us.’’
He did this by replacing Motor Me with 282 Cars which was operated by two of his former Motor Me staff.
He also used other car dealers to ‘‘get rid of’’ his cars but would not name them to protect them from a Trade Me ban.
Another couple left out of pocket by Motor Me, Miriam and Will Hayward, were also sceptical about ever receiving their money.
The Haywards sent a bailiff to Smith’s house but he was unsuccessful as the cars were not under Smith’s name.
Miriam Hayward said she would only believe him when she saw the money.
‘‘We’re going to exhaust every possible avenue. We might have let it go had he not been so arrogant,’’ she said.
The next step for both couples was a financial assessment hearing in the Auckland District Court, they said.
But Blenheim Motor Me victim Olivia Mills and Adam Fursdon hoped that Smith would keep his word.
‘‘It might be a turning point for him maybe. Sure, trustworthiness is fairly low but I’m a positive person and hope people can change their stripes,’’ Mills said.
Smith said he regretted not paying the customers who had problems with his cars sooner.
‘‘I wish I could have paid them back but unfortunately due to other circumstances, we just don’t have the funds available and we’re raising the funds.
‘‘Once the funds are raised we’ll pay them back.’’
He said he hoped paying the customers back would end the chapter and he could move on with his life.
‘‘Definitely not in the car dealing industry . . . Not any more. Done with it forever,’’ Smith said.