Service director stakes more than $500,000 selling penny lift kits at Nissan dealer

Picked up by Neeson trucks to exist Somewhere. And it happens that there are enough buyers that the manager of the parts dealership managed to sell more than $500,000 lifting kits and get out of pocket money. Until greed caught up with him.

Former Director of Parts at Formula Nissan in Barre, Vermont, pleaded guilty in federal court to one count of mail box fraud. According to Automotive newsan employee was hired in 2019 to manage the parts and service department, eventually being promoted to director.

The parts scheme, however, did not start until 2021, and between January of that year and September 2022, the parts director ordered hundreds of Nissan lift kits on behalf of the dealership. On the face of it, this is standard operating procedure: parts are ordered from the corporation, the dealership issues an invoice, the dealership pays the invoice, and the parts are entered into inventory. Oh, but he missed that last part. Instead, he posted spare parts for sale on Facebook.

The kits cost between $2,300 and $2,900, but the scammer listed them below the dealership’s wholesale price and received payments through his personal PayPal. He told inquisitive customers that the deep discounts were possible because Formula Nissan was getting parts at dealer prices (not because they were actually stolen). In addition, he even used the dealer’s FedEx account to ship over 200 kits across the country.

The charging documents allege “out-of-pocket losses” to the dealership and its insurance company of at least $575,000. For now, Sticky Fingers remains free with conditions pending a sentencing hearing that was originally scheduled for Oct. 31 but has been postponed until Dec. 12. mail fraud The guilty plea means he faces up to 20 years in prison plus a fine or double the dealership’s losses, whichever is greater.