3x the lost money as compensation is sweet for the buyer but unlikely to deter future frauds. In my jurisdiction shenanigans like that could result in up to 15 years behind bars.
Yeah, it used to be that if you figured out something was fraudulent, you could deliberately buy like 100 of it and then sue in court, and it was basically a consistent way to invest your money that got 3 times returns. But then they decided that deliberately buying more of a product that you knew was fraudulent in order to make money was in and of itself fraudulent behaviour.
Back in the 90s and early 2000s, there were quite a few people who got famous for making a fortune out of suing companies with bad practices. Now, you hardly ever see these cases anymore.
Like, in this case with the toy excavator, maybe there weren't that many other victims. But there are a lot of companies, say, manufacturing beef jerky that doesn't contain any beef, explicitly lying on their ingredient's list, because even if they got found out, at most, they have to pay back 3x, like, two bags of beef jerky (or however many bags the judge decides is a normal amount for a person to purchase), and all of the other customers who don't have time to sue or didn't hear about the case just remain fucked. So it's practically always worth it.
This is probably a big reason why they thought they could get away with using the same trucks to transport industrial oils and cooking oil.
3x the lost money as compensation is sweet for the buyer but unlikely to deter future frauds. In my jurisdiction shenanigans like that could result in up to 15 years behind bars.
Yeah, it used to be that if you figured out something was fraudulent, you could deliberately buy like 100 of it and then sue in court, and it was basically a consistent way to invest your money that got 3 times returns. But then they decided that deliberately buying more of a product that you knew was fraudulent in order to make money was in and of itself fraudulent behaviour.
Back in the 90s and early 2000s, there were quite a few people who got famous for making a fortune out of suing companies with bad practices. Now, you hardly ever see these cases anymore.
Like, in this case with the toy excavator, maybe there weren't that many other victims. But there are a lot of companies, say, manufacturing beef jerky that doesn't contain any beef, explicitly lying on their ingredient's list, because even if they got found out, at most, they have to pay back 3x, like, two bags of beef jerky (or however many bags the judge decides is a normal amount for a person to purchase), and all of the other customers who don't have time to sue or didn't hear about the case just remain fucked. So it's practically always worth it.
This is probably a big reason why they thought they could get away with using the same trucks to transport industrial oils and cooking oil.