Towed vehicle, advice needed (was my old car)

[Nicola&Matthew 0]

Hi, I'm looking for some advice from people who have been in a similar situation! I've tried to make this as simple and to the point as possible, thank you for taking your time to read this and offer advice.

Long story cut short: work part time with a guy who does car repairs on the side. Old car is at deaths door buy a new car (last Nov.), guy offers do urgent break work on my new car in exchange for my old car (he needed a new car to do up). I agree, job is done and he has done further work on my new car with no probs.

Fast forward to July I get a letter from a towing company regarding this old car that we no longer own saying that we owe them a lot of money. Car was towed in Minnesota we live in Wisconsin. I call up and talk to someone there and explain my situation and the guy was less than helpful and definately less than friendly and told me that I needed to find a way to proove that this car is not mine and that in Minnesota there is a way of getting a copy of the title "force notice of sale", he wasn't sure if there is anything like that in Wisconsin. Needless to say there is nothing like that in Wisconsin that I can get from the DMV.

I tell guy from work that he'd better get the title to me so that I can copy it and mail it off. Guy is now very shady and is giving me the run around saying that it's in the car, then his cousin has it, to i'll look at home. The more I get to know this guy the more shady he becomes and I have a really bad feeling that he did not get the car put into his name. He even suggested that i call up the towing company and tell them that I don't want the car (which I totally refused to do as it is not mine!). I totally get that I messed up and made a huge error in personality judgement.

In Wisconsin you can transfer your plates to your new vehicle, so I have the proof that my new vehicle has my old plates. I also called my insurance company to transfer my insurance to the new car and cancelled it on my old vehicle when it was "sold". This is all the proof I have, I'm totally at a loss as to what to do now. I got another letter today saying that the old vehicle has been junked, I owe double what the last letter stated and that if I don't pay it they'll take legal action to reclaim the money. We want to get a mortgage in the next few months and I'm so worried that my screw up is going to affect our credit rating. Any advice would be so helpful, I don't know what to do!