\n<\/p>\n
An Orange County towing company sold the cars of nearly 150 military members while some service members were deployed overseas, the federal government claimed in a lawsuit filed Wednesday. <\/p>\n
According to a U.S. Justice Department complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, San Clemente-based S&K Towing signed a contract in August 2020 to tow cars for the Marine Corps Police Department at Camp Pendleton, a massive military base that houses about 42,000 active-duty soldiers. Of the cars towed through April 2025, the company “auctioned, sold or disposed” of 148 cars in violation of the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, which mandates additional legal steps be taken before a company can seize an active-duty service member’s property or enforce a lien against him, the Justice Department wrote in the complaint. <\/p>\n
“The men and women serving in our nation’s military have peace of mind knowing that their legal rights are protected at home while they serve in the United States,” First Assistant U.S. Atty. Bill Essaly said in a statement. \u201cIt is unacceptable and illegal for any business to sell or dispose of these vehicles without following the laws protecting service members.\u201d<\/p>\n
S&K Towing declined to comment for this article. <\/p>\n
The company had access to a Defense Department database to check whether service members were protected by law, yet it had no “policy or practice” of searching the database to ensure that the vehicles it was selling did not belong to people protected by law. According to the complaint, in some cases, S&K Towing sold vehicles that still contained military equipment, uniforms and awards, or after being informed that the owner was deployed overseas. <\/p>\n
The Justice Department claims the company continued to sell vehicles to military members even after Camp Pendleton’s attorney told them in 2024 that they could not sell the vehicles without a court order. According to the complaint, the S&K Towing employee told the attorney, “We do this all the time.” <\/p>\n
The Justice Department is requesting compensation to service members whose cars were sold, civil penalties against the company and any “additional relief that the interests of justice may require.” <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An Orange County towing company sold the cars of nearly 150 military members while some service members were deployed overseas, the federal government claimed in a lawsuit filed Wednesday. According to a U.S. Justice Department complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, San Clemente-based S&K Towing signed a contract<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23143,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[10654,2186,319,790,7342,5030,316,7579,1020,10653],"class_list":{"0":"post-23142","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bible-verse","8":"tag-auctioned","9":"tag-cars","10":"tag-claims","11":"tag-company","12":"tag-deployed","13":"tag-doj","14":"tag-members","15":"tag-service","16":"tag-socal","17":"tag-towing"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23142"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23142\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23144,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23142\/revisions\/23144"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}