To be completely honest, it is absolutely
insane that you took someone at their word that they were selling you a nearly 25 year old car with only 70k miles and only did a Carfax AFTER the purchase.
Regardless, you have some self-help which I think is possible at minimal cost to you, but it would take significant time and effort with a potential that you would never recovery anything anyway.
What do you believe to be the actual value of the car versus the 16k you paid?
If I were you, I would file a small claims case. This is easier for me since I am an attorney, but here's a basic overview of some of the stuff you will need or should think about if you go this route. You will need a lot of information but at minimum, the following:
1. Seller name and address to serve them with a copy of the lawsuit.
2. Some written evidence of them communicating that the car had 1 owner, 70k miles. Possibly some proof that you were actually talking about the same car.
3. Some evidence that the car in fact has more than 1 owner and 70k miles. Again, you need to be able to connect it to the actual car in question. This is going to be the tough part if the ODO says 70k. How can you prove the ODO is wrong or has been altered? Why is the Carfax more reliable than the actual ODO? Why should the judge believe your Carfax over his? You may have to go as far as paying an expert to testify that it's been tampered with. Don't assume you can just show up with a Carfax that says 280k miles and win. Frankly, I'm not convinced myself based on the condition of the car and pictures you posted.
4. Some evidence of the difference in value between what he communicated the car to be and what it actually is. Depending on the rules of small claims court in your jurisdiction, something like two different bluebook entries could be enough.
Keep in mind, you need to be aware of the "rules of evidence" for this Court. You may or may not be able to just show up with printouts. If the rules are relaxed, you probably can. If not, you may need to offer some authentication that the documents you want the judge to see are true and accruate. Worse, you may have to actually worry about whether small claims allows heresay evidence which are out of court statements, such as a KBB printout, trying to prove what the statements says. Many of the small claims courts I've seen are pretty relaxed on this front.
There is also likely some exchange of pleadings, such as potentially your complaint, or a bill of particulars, or evidence before trial.
At the end of it all, I would probably ask the judge for the difference in value.
I assume this person is a scammer that has taken steps to intentionally hide their real identity or assets. They probably didn't give you a real name or address. Or worse, potentially they got scammed themselves and didn't know either. That may be a problem you run into. What if they show up to Court and say, "I didn't know it had 280k miles. I bought it last year, never drove it, so I decided to sell."
Even if you win, I doubt the person is going to just hand over several thousand dollars. I would guess at some point, you'd need to go through the steps of getting more information from them, such as their employer or bank accounts, to actually garnish wages or funds. This can be a whole entire process in and of itself and most attorneys actually will decline cases that require this because they dont want to sit around waiting 10 years to get paid.
Given your profile says you're in Anaheim, I'd start here:
Small Claims at a Glance You can use the Small Claims court if you have a dispute with a person, company or government agency involving money. An individual (including a sole proprietorship) cannot ask for more than $12,500.00. Corporations, partnerships, and other entities cannot ask for more than
www.occourts.org
sacramento.craigslist.org
