By MIKE CAPUTO
Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice announced the arrest of 11 individuals and a corporation, Universal Auto World, for what investigators described as a 'tangled web' of financial schemes, stolen identities and consumer fraud. Rice said that homicide detectives, who examined the crime scene at Universal Auto World after the murder of 27-year-old salesman Collin Thomas on Jan. 11, 2007, eventually uncovered a pattern of financial fraud at the dealership.
'The Homicide Squad quickly realized the crime scene, Universal Auto World, was a hotbed of financial scheming, identity theft and consumer fraud,' Rice told reporters at a press conference in her Mineola office on July 23.
The joint investigation, conducted by the D.A.'s Economic Crimes Bureau, the Nassau County Police Department's Crimes Against Property Squad, 4th Precinct detectives and the state Department of Motor Vehicles, probed the practices of Universal Auto World as well as Victory Toyota, which is still in operation on Burnside Avenue in North Lawrence.
Eight of the 11 people arrested were linked to fraud at Universal Auto World. Six of those were non-employees who were suspected of acting as 'middlemen' or 'straw buyers,' investigators said.
The middlemen, William White, 28, of Bay Shore and Rajmohan Autar, 33, of Queens Village, allegedly stole identities in order to purchase vehicles with loans and give them to third parties who wanted to remain anonymous, Rice said. According to investigators, there were a total of 10 such instances, including the theft of the identity of an unsuspecting 75-year-old Suffolk County woman, which was used to purchase $250,000 in high-end vehicles.
The four straw buyers allowed their identities and credit records to be used for the purchase of vehicles that they would never possess, and allowed their signatures and personal information to be used for loans they never intended to repay, the district attorney said. In return, they were compensated with checks or cash. Universal Auto World, meanwhile, sold the vehicles to buyers who wanted their identities concealed, investigators said. Damian Cole, 44, of Cambria Heights; Nazeem Mohamed, 43, of Richmond Hill; Haimraj Prashad, 38, of Jamaica, Queens; and Maurice Coleman, 22, of Elmont were the four listed by the district attorney as straw buyers.
Two other suspects linked to the fraud scheme were Christ Tsiropoulos, 38, of Bellmore, the former general manager and co-owner of Universal, and Mark Harley, 30, of Far Rockaway, the dealership's former finance manager. Both were arrested in December 2007, police said.
Three additional suspects were linked to fraudulent practices at nearby Victory Toyota. George Buzzetta, 54, of Port Charlotte, Fla., Victory's former finance director, and Anne Edgar Lockhart, 29, of Springfield Garden, a former sales manager, were accused of adding unnecessary costs like anti-theft devices and extended warranties for customers who sought loans, investigators said. Although they were found to do so in fewer than five instances, detectives said, the two also allegedly used a 'bait-and-switch' technique in which they pocketed cash deposits and added those costs to the loans without consumers' knowledge.
Former Victory salesman Terrence Alford, 47, of Elmont, was arrested on July 3 after investigators discovered that he had stolen a customer's $5,000 down payment.
Rebuilding an image
Dennis Cirillo, operations manager of Victory Toyota, said his dealership was victimized by the acts of 'three rouge employees.' He said the dealership has cooperated fully with the extensive investigation and that all three employees had been terminated.
'The fact of the matter is that we had three rogue employees that did us wrong, our clients wrong and the other employees of Victory Toyota [wrong],' Cirillo said.
Although the investigation was not made public until the district attorney's press conference, Cirillo claimed that his company's image had been damaged. He said the media had linked Victory Toyota to Universal's fraud ring as well as Thomas's murder.
'We have been putting our image back together for over a year now,' Cirillo said. 'Now we have this setback with the press and being tied into Universal and all the problems that occurred there.'
Since the arrests of the Victory employees, Cirillo said, the company has implemented a variety of measures to assure a safer and more secure experience for both customers and employees. All financial dealings between customers and employees are recorded and archived, he said.
Also, a full-time financial director was hired to review all paperwork filed by the managers, and extensive background checks are conducted on potential employees, Cirillo said. Rice explained at the press conference that Victory had fully complied with the investigation, and reached out to affected consumers.
'Right now I say to you there is probably no safer place to buy a car than Victory Toyota,' Cirillo said. 'I have made a lot of changes in this dealership to protect not only myself, but to protect my employees and, most of all, to protect the consumers.'
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