Buying and Selling Yachts in Maryland... A cautionary tail.

Yacht Brokers in Maryland... A Cautionary Tail of Theft and Skulduggery.

I have owned three Hatteras yachts buying my first first in RI, second in FL and my most recent a 58 MY in Maryland so I am hardly new to the process. I have recently finished a legal battle that has lasted three and 1/2 years after the broker and sales agent involved, Edwin Blakesley and William Miners on the Eastern Shore, took $177,000.00 out of the escrow account and Blakesley fled to Arkansas. I post this in order to warn folks about the lack of adequate licensing and bonding for brokers in the State of Maryland.

I am not posting this to achieve some form of catharsis or to be vindictive now that they have been found guilty of their respective bad acts and I assume that most brokers doing business in Maryland are honorable, knowledgeable folk.

I bring this issue up to this group in order to say that, in my opinion and unlike FL, escrow accounts and the company principals that hold them are not adequately regulated and are not required to carry bonds in equal amounts to the money held. That is a simple fact and in order to avoid joining me in my multi-year saga and large financial loss, my advice is NEVER send funds to yacht brokers in this state to hold in trust for closing.

As much as it pains me to advise people to incur the extra cost of an attorney, they do have to be fully bonded and are much less likely (though not unheard of) to steal from their clients trust accounts.

To add insult to injury, it took me years to get the District Attorneys to prosecute and that only happened AFTER I had a NY prosecutor call on my behalf demanding action. Before that I actually had a local DA tell me that "he was not in the business of protecting northerners." More than 30,000 of my money went to the state to pay off tax bills for their firm Yachts Unlimited and the State Dept of Revenue still won't refund those dollars, despite the fact that they have been proven as stolen.

These two thiefs had been involved with numerous other smaller schemes and in fact they used my money to settle prior claims for similar but smaller acts in a neghboring county. The state didnt limit thier ability to continue this behavior in ANY way until I started making a huge fuss about it. One is in jail as I type this but they are letting him out (after extraditing him from Arkasas ) in august and the other (who still sits on the Chesapeake City Planning Commission) has never been criminally prosecuted and is now selling cars at a dealership (Williams Used Cars ) in Elkton. I have fraud judgements against both of them with little hope of making a meaningful recovery becasue the State allows people to avoid paying debts if they hold assets jointly with a family member. So unlike FL and NY you can't force a sale of a jointly held asset and claim the debtors share of the proceeds.

Again I am loathe to condemn all the honorable folks working in MD because of the actions of a few, but until the State of Maryland changes how they regulate this industry, I strongly caution everyone to either use an attorney to complete the sale or buy in another state where brokers are held to a higher standard of ethics.

If I have offended a MD broker by association here I apologize, that was not my intent.

PS. The one vindictive thing that i AM planning is, now that i have concrete legal standing to point to, I intend to publicize this through op-eds, and letters to the editors of all the national and regional marine consumer and trade press. If that has a negative impact on confidence in doing business in MD and thus impacting revenue to the state, then perhaps they will actually change the regulations and dare I dream... return the stolen money which they have received.

WOW. Sorry for all your troubles, hassels and expensive education. You have done us all a great justice in providing a "What can happen to you" scenario. I appreciate your information as we have always done business on a handshake. Unfortunately no one can afford to do business this way in todays world. Again, sorry for your losses and headache.
Jim

Maryland is pretty screwed up in more ways than one. The are challenging a manufacturers pricing policy at the request of an online out of state dealer who regularly tells people to buy online with no sales tax.

Really sorry to hear of your bad experience in Maryland. Not just the affront of losing your hard earned money but also the many brick walls you faced trying to find justice and prevent a similar loss falling on other innocent people. Your posting was very professional and presented an objective analysis of your nightmare. Thank you for your posting and I think you are quite right to continue to publish your story since you are doing nothing more than presenting the facts of what happened to you.

Bill

Yacht brokers are just like contractors, lawyers, stock brokers, and other professionals, some are good, some are very good, some are bad, and some are very bad.
Only Florida and California require licensing but there are some guidelines to brokers all over the US.
How long has the company been in business?
How long has the broker been in the boat business?
Do they actually have a real office or they only online?
Do they rent or own the office, boat yard or marina?
Long time businesses have a reputation to uphold, otherwise they do not become long time businesses.
I am thankful to see Sandspur, that you are not blaming brokers in general but just these two crooks, but I am sorry to hear about any boat buyer's or boat seller's problems.

I had a Drill Sargeant back in basic who was also a philosopher, I'm sure any other grunts here know the type.

One of his two philosophies of life was, No mater where you go there will always be the same percentage of people who are just A$$holes. He went on to say he was going to retire in Wyoming because with just a few hundred thousand people, thats just fewer A$$holes than anywhere else.

Ole Pitts didnt make it to retirement and I won't tell his second philosopy of life in mixed company, but just suffice it to say A$$holes are A$$holes no matter if they are Doctors, Lawyers, Indian Chiefs or Boat Brokers and I try and live by the rule that just because one is a lying, thieving rat-bastard crook has no bearing on the community at large.

you can tell I'm not bitter right?

Boat dealers in Maryland are licensed, but only the firm, not the individual salesman like in Florida. The bonding requirement is the same in both states, and it is ONLY to protect the State relative to the sales tax in the dealer's possession, not the customer's escrow funds.

A crook is a crook. No manor of license or bond can fully protect anyone from a crook if that's what they are.

I have heard of the company name you mention, but not the individuals. They must have been small time flash-in-the-pan players as I never ran across them, and I have been a boat dealer/broker on the Eastern Shore of Maryland for 21 years.

I'm sorry for your poor treatment here by our State an some of its illustrious, if not former citizens.

Thanks for sharing your story with us. We all need to be vigilant in doing business in the current economic climate.

There are thieves all over, and there are decent folks all over as well. I bought two boats in Florida and got the royal shaft both times. I bought a boat in Virginia (Norfolk) and did decently well; not a bad little boat at all (a 37' Egg, if anyone's interested) I bought one boat in Maryland- the 36' Hatteras I bought in 1991 and still own. The broker who helped me find and buy that boat (in CT, by the way) is licensed in MD and FL as well.

I'm sorry you had a terrible experience here in MD. There are a goodly number of honest and reliable yacht brokers in this area, some of whom have been in business for two or three decades. There are also, sad to say, some people who are NOT honest, and who will be lucky if they don't inhabit a set of cement boots one of these days. I hope that the folks who were not honorable in their dealing with you get what's coming to them, and I hope that if you travel by boat through MD, you stop in Annapolis and take advantage of my standing offer of dinner for any HOF member who comes through here. At least in that event you will have had one good experience in my adopted state. We DO have acceptable eateries here.

IMHO.....

If you're a seller no brokerage ever gets to hold escrow beyond the "earnest money." At closing the buyer disburses your amount directly to you, by FedWire. Possession does not transfer until you have the Fed Reference Number - period. Nobody gets your property until you have been paid for it - that's the beginning and end of the disucssion.

If you're a buyer you send two wires - one to the seller in the amount of their net, the second to the brokerage for all other expenses and items. If sales tax is to be collected and paid you get a bill of sale from the brokerage showing itemization. In most cases the earnest money covers the vast majority of the second (brokerage) wire; if you deposited 10% with the offer then the remainder to be disbursed to the brokerage amounts primarily to sales tax as the earnest deposit closely matches the typical commission.

I've done this for both houses and boats and have never had a problem with it. This procedure limits the exposure of both seller and buyer to a reasonable amount and no honest brokerage (of either homes or boats) should have a problem with it, as it changes nothing for them. If the brokerage involved won't deal on these terms as a seller (the guy with the biggest risk of such a thing happening) I won't deal at all. I'd far rather fight with some jackass over $20k than $200k if someone turns out to be a crook.

This sort of scam (not properly disbursing escrowed funds - literally stealing them) has become rampant of late in the car business; you trade in your vehicle that has a note on it for a new one and a month later find out that the dealer never paid the original note and went out of business. If that happens to you you're screwed.

When it comes to big-ticket things like boats and houses the above will limit the damage should anyone decide to act in an unscrupulous manner.

That is a lesson learned the haed way Genisis.

Wish I had seen a thread like this 3 years ago.