Theo D'oro

In April, of 2011, I put a 50% down payment on an older Chris Craft as a liveaboard that he claimed was mechanically sound. When it turned out it was not, he wanted more money to repair the engines. Smelling a rat, I asked for my money back and he refused. He said he would give me my money back when he sold the boat to someone else. I pressured him by walking with a big picket sign in front of his business. I went to the police department and a sympathetic officer told me he had leased that same boat to 2 other women, one of whom had lost all she had in the deal. I tried to follow up with the San Rafael Police Department, but neither that, nor any officer ever returned my calls. Eventually I realized I would have to lose half the price of the vessel plus a couple of thousand I had spent to do a bottom job (orchestrated by him so it cost double what he had initially told me). Unwilling to have sunk my entire (at the time) savings into a loss, I borrowed some money and offered him what the boat was worth without the working engines. Theo agreed to take the remainder of the money, but ripped me off by "selling" me a boat he didn't even have title to. Essentially, he gave me a fake title. I sued him in Marin Superior Court and won. He counter-sued, and I still won. I ended up having to buy the boat all over again from the original owner. Theo then thought he would "get" me by putting a lien on the boat, but all it did was screw the poor lien company out of money as well. Finally, in November, 2011 he sent me a money order for $20.00. In a burst of naivete, and thinking the court had compelled him to pay up (albeit a little at a time), I sent the original owner $500.00 as he had to sell the boat to me at a loss and I wanted to do the right thing, but that was the only money I ever saw from Theo. The original owner lost out more than I did, but we both got burned by this scammer. Why Marin County has not locked up this POS scam artist is beyond me. One of his M.O's seems to be to advertise out of the area, so people are less apt to make the trip into Marin to deal with him.