An elderly widow claims that a New Rochelle used car dealer committed fraud by failing to notify her for a year that her car had been sold.
Cherie Doherty-Salerno, 65, of City Island in the Bronx, is demanding triple monetary damages for alleged deceptive acts and a $10,000 penalty for fraud against an elderly person, from US 1 Auto Sales and owner Theodore Tanney.
“This matter,” she states in a complaint filed on Sept. 29 in Westchester Supreme Court, “is an elderly person’s nightmare.”
Tanney and US 1 Auto Sales did not reply to a message submitted through the car lot’s website, asking for their side of the story.
Tanney founded the business in 1977. It is located at 109 Main Street, New Rochelle, and it also offers car maintenance services and car rentals.
The car in question is a 2018 Hyundai Sonata that had been driven 27,671 miles when Nicholas and Cherie Salerno bought it in January 2022.
Nicholas Salerno was the primary driver. But within months of buying the car he became ill. Salerno, a former drug rehabilitation counselor, died in December 2022, at age 84.
Doherty-Salerno says she brought the car to US 1 Auto Sales when it had about 32,000 miles on the odometer and was worth an estimated $17,000. The complaint does not describe the details of their arrangement but states that her sole purpose was to sell the car “at the highest price and to receive the net proceeds.”
Ten months later, according to the complaint, she began receiving a $320 check every month to cover a financing charge while the car was on the lot.
When Doherty-Salerno asked about the status of the car this past June, she claims she was told to “forget about the [Hyundai], it’s gone.”
But according to a state Division of Motor Vehicles record, the car was sold one year before, when it had 45,577 miles on the odometer.
Doherty-Salerno claims that the car was driven more than 20,000 miles after she brought it to US 1 Auto Sales. (Based on her estimate of 32,000 miles when she dropped it off, it appears that about 13,500 miles are unaccounted for.)
She believes the car was used as part of a rental fleet or as a loaner for customers whose cars were in the shop for repairs, “thereby devaluing the Hyundai.”
She is seeking unspecified compensation for fraud, triple damages for false advertising and deceptive business practices, $10,000 for abusing an elderly person, and unspecified punitive damages for breach of contract.
