BEWARE: The Anti-fencing Law and The Story of How I Got Involved
Buyer (and seller) BEWARE: The Anti-fencing law and The story of how I got involved in a similar predicament.Hey all and welcome again to the RIG’s Den, the monthly column from your peeps at the RIG store. For this month’s column I’d like to dedicate some space again to buying and selling instruments:Many a time when I would chance upon a thought provoking photo with a long ass narrative on Facebook. Heck! It’s this generation’s modern take on the chain mail and all that meme theory (go ahead and Google that). Some are real and informative others are downright ridiculous and bordering on the stupid. Sometimes a dead baby, sometimes a picture of an inspiring cancer survivor and sometimes, just a picture of a taxi and his plate number and a long retelling of the passenger’s woes with said taxi. Whatever, I didn’t have a proper opening for the article.This week’s story is sort of related to a taxi and buying and selling gear online.Now, you probably heard about internet scams in almost all of the buying and selling circles online. They are Horror stories :selling defective items, ghost shipment scams, violent hold ups and all that bad rap. But mine is not like that, no sir, no scams or nothing but still a lot of pain in the ass.The story started a few months ago, I being a keen buy and seller would score hordes of shops, websites and friends of friends just to acquire new stuff. I was tipped that there was a thrift store nearby my place that was selling some pedals for a real cheap amount of money (for the sake of everyone’s privacy, I will no longer name the pedals, the store and the people involved). The price was so ridiculous that I didn’t even bother to check it out. Come two weeks later I chanced upon the area and decided to take a look I was shocked, 8 pedals were being sold for a real bargain of a price. The said pedals value would’ve been more than double the amount I paid for. So I, being the bargain finder that I am, reserved the pedals with a downpayment and then bought the pedals after 2 days. I went home tested everything and everything looked good. During the next few days I proceeded to clean the items, take pictures and post the stuff for sale at my page.Then the bad shit happened, after about 2 weeks in, a prospective buyer called, made arrangements and then scheduled a meet up. To my surprise during the meet up there were these two guys who came forward and one of them claimed that the items being sold (by me) were alerted and reported missing at a local police station. (I’m trying to avoid using the word “stolen” as nobody has proven that yet). I told him “how can you prove ownership?” He then showed me some boxes with the serial numbers that matched the item that I was selling, he also showed me a couple of receipts that showed that he really purchased said items along with a missing items report he filed at his local police station. He even showed me Facebook pics of the item from gigs showing him using the said items. He claims that the items we’re left at a taxi after one of his gigs (again I’m avoiding using the word stolen to show no prejudice).
“We exchanged details and contact info. I left home with no pedals (I returned them DUH!) and no money got reimbursed, which left me a little frustrated. I went home and did some Googling around and tried to find out about my rights.This is where the anti fencing law comes in:
RESIDENTIAL DECREE NO. 1612 or ANTI-FENCING LAW OF 1979 is a law that criminalizes the act of buying and/or selling of stolen items.Section 2 of this law defines “fencing” as the act of any person who, with intent gain for himself or for another, shall buy, receive, possess, keep, acquire, conceal, sell or dispose of, or shall buy and sell, or in any other manner deal in any article, item, object or anything of value which he knows, or should be known to him, to have been derived from the proceeds of the crime of robbery or theft.You can read PD1612 or Anti fencing law of 1979 here.From what I’ve read though (Disclaimer: I’m no lawyer.)1. It is the store’s obligation to check with the police any item from an unlicensed dealer before selling it (in this case before selling it, the pedals, to me as the buyer).I would however, by definition still be liable because I bought the items and intended to sell it albeit not knowing where they came from.2. It would be hard to define if the said pedals were “stolen” by the taxi or simply “left” there by fault of the owner’s negligence or the taxi driver’s negligence to return the said pedals hence. I’m not claiming that said items were stolen in this article.3. I would have no beef with the owner of the pedals since I returned the pedals already, the liability mostly goes to the thrift store for selling the said pedals to me (or I could be wrong here).4. It would be more costly for everybody if we sued the heck out of each other.During the evening I have received a text from the thrift store’s owner, we made arrangements and he assured me that he would fix this mess.The next day we met and I got back my money. So, that was fast and to think I thought I needed to pay for a lawyer whew! And that was that, it was the “happy ending” to that pain in the ass day for me. Pretty much all the fuss was for the good, the dude got his items back, I got my money back and the store did not suffer legal and criminal liabilities.