I had been looking for a red ducati 996 biposoto for a bit of time. B/c the old style was not manufactured any longer i had to search for a pre-owned one. I came upon joe tortora via e-mail and he had told me he had one that was mint. I asked him many questions such as "has the bike ever touched the ground?" "has it ever been in an accident?" "how many owners?" "any cosmetic damage or blemishes?" joe told me that the bike was in mint and this was the second owner. He, however, expressed to me that he sold the bike to the first owner and he has done all the work on the bike since the time it was sold. Joe tortora also told me there were no blemishes on the bike and it was in mint condition.
He also said it had never touched the ground and had never been in an accident of any sort. When i asked joe about the owner and why the owner was selling the bike, he told me that the owner was a retired police officer who owned roughly 5 other ducatis and his wife was making him sell one. My brother also contacted joe numerous times with the same questions and got the same answers. I had joe send me pictures of the bike and it looked mint. The light reflected off the paint like none-other. I kept asking joe to send me the vin, and he kept saying he did, but i never received it ahead of time. All his answers were consistent with his previous ones, and the pictures looked great so i figured he was telling me the truth.
I thought everything was good, so i told joe tortora i would purchase the bike. I also told him i wanted a shipping company to ship the bike and he was insistant on having a friend, who is also in the ducati business and has a motorcycle trailer, bring the bike to michigan. I was pretty set on the 3rd party transport company, but joe was insistant on his friend bringing the bike, so i again placed my trust that everything would go smoothly.
When i arrived in michigan, the bike was sitting at the transportation guy's house. I went over to pick it up with a buddy, and the first thing we saw was a cracked left farring. There were alot of scratches all over the bike, and the right side was scuffed up as if the bike had been laid down. I was astonished. I wanted to leave the bike there, but joe made sure to cash my check ahead of time and the transport guy didn't want the bike sitting at his place, so we took it. I called joe tortora and told him what the bike looked like and he acted like it was news to him.
We took the bike to a ducati dealership and a mechanic looked at it. The mechanic said the bike had definitely been laid down while being ridden, and found the odometer disconnected. Therefore, there were many more miles on the bike than what joe had disclosed. I called joe out on this as well, and he said he new nothing about that. He also told me i should have used a 3rd party transport to bring the bike over. I told him that i wanted to do that and he was extremely insistant on using his friend. Now it all came together.
The mechanic went over the bike and i set up an appointment to have everything done. Not to mention i asked joe if the oil change had been done and he told me it had just been done. The mechanic looked at the oil and said that it was past due. Wow, so much for business ethics, eh joe?
When i got the bike and saw the state of it i pulled a carfax report and found out why joe wouldn't send me the vin #. The bike had been in a motor vehicle accident back in 2002.
That was pretty interesting, but the cherry on top was when i tracked down the owner, b/c joe wouldn't let me contact him - he said that the owner wanted joe to take care of the selling, so when i tracked down the owner i found out he had never owned a ducati and the bike being sold was his son's bike.
Anyway, to make a long story short, the front-end of the bike ended up coming loose when i was on it and i wound up in the hospital for about 3 months. The mechanics who looked at it after i told them what happened agreed i got taken and the lawyers said i should file a law suit against joe. When i brought this up to joe, he told me that if i was going to sew him, i would have to come to new york.
In closing, i did go back over the pictures and every place the light is gleaming off the bike is where the scratches and cracks are. I did bring this to joe's attention and he told me he went over the bike with a fine-toothed comb. When i asked him about the pictures showing the blemishes when you look really close at them, he still tried to lie his way out of it.
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