Selling Out Of Trust

Categories: Trusts and Estates

You work for a car dealership, Big Tim’s Crazy Hondas. The dealership borrows money from a bank to purchase a car it plans to sell. You sell the car. However, your boss, the owner of the dealership, Big Tim himself, doesn’t use the cash from the sale to repay the loan. Instead, he uses the money to purchase more inventory, i.e. another car.

That practice is called selling out of trust. Instead of using the proceeds from the sale of the car to repay the original loan (like he's supposed to), Big Tim has spent the cash somewhere else. It's a risky operation. If Big Tim can't ultimately pay back the loan, he could be in a lot of trouble. Meanwhile, the lender is exposed as well. If Tim defaults, they can't simply repossess the car, as it was sold to the customer.

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Finance: What is Hypothecation?7 Views

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Finance a la shmoop what is hypothecation? alright well here's apothecation

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and yes all legal drugs even the absinthe there but hypothecation is [Man discussing hypothecation appears]

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something totally different although it does involve some forms of alchemy at

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least a financial alchemy in fact hypothecation is basically the process

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or rules behind pledging collateral for a loan jimmy walnuts has gotten out of [Jimmy walking down the street]

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the Mafia game he wants to take all the dough he made shaking down kwik-e-mart [Jimmy running from police with cash]

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and invest it and he wants his investment account at his stock

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brokerage to be a margin account well he has a hundred grand in the account and

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with a 50% margin limit Jimmy can borrow or margin up to 50 grand worth of his

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stock to you know buy stuff like a new Beemer without all the bullet holes in [BMW car with bullet holes]

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it so he will hypothecate his 100 grand in stocks as that collateral borrowing

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forty seven thousand dollars to buy the car and all is good

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well eventually jimmy plans to pay down his margin account with both cash he [Jimmy carrying cash to woman]

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deposits in there and also through the dividends that the account generates on

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its own which usually exceeds the margin interest that the brokerage is charging

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him so where does hypothecation run into trouble well what if Jimmy wanted to buy

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10 cars like you know he just had a fetish for em and he pledged

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forty-seven thousand for this baby yeah the Beemer but then he also wanted that

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baby for 22 grand and while this one for 35 grand and that one for 70 well he

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can only pledge his collateral once for one setting or one purchase that is he

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can't go to one car seller and promise him the hundred thousand dollars that's

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in his brokerage account as collateral for this used Ferrari and then go to a

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different car seller and pledge him the same hundred thousand dollars that's in

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his brokerage account for that 1973 James Bond Aston Martin and then go to a

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third car seller and do the same thing basically he's promising collateral to a

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whole bunch of people well beyond what that collateral is actually worth and

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basically lying about you know what he's got in his pocket quickly he will have [Man discussing Jimmy's collateral]

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pledged a few hundred thousand dollars worth of collateral in a brokerage

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account that only had value of 100 grand so yeah unless you're

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you know connected we don't recommend going the Jimmy walnuts route [Jimmy appears tied up]

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