GIBSONTON, Fla. — The owners of Heath’s Exotic Cars and Leasing of Gibsonton, Fla., were arrested Friday and charged with defrauding a finance source, the Tampa Bay Times reports.
Read: Mass. Dealer Agrees to Nearly $1M Settlement
Husband and wife Haytham Abdulatif Daas, 61, and Peggy Ann Daas, 59, stand accused of selling 35 fake retail installment sale contracts to Mid-Atlantic Finance Co., which reportedly offers a program in which buy here, pay here loans can be acquired from dealers after three months of on-time payments.
Police say the couple created the fake RISCs by repurposing information submitted by actual sold customers — including one who had been dead for five years when “their” contract was sold to Mid-Atlantic — and altered or created from scratch documents intended to prove the three-month threshold had been met.
The scheme amounted to “a systematic, ongoing course of conduct with the intent to defraud one or more person by false or fraudulent pretenses.”
Remarkably, the FHP claims that, in addition to forging their signatures, the couple went so far as to impersonate customers in phone calls to Mid-Atlantic to secure the agreements. Authorities said at least two contracts worth $139,000 resulted in vehicles titled in the “buyers’” names without their knowledge. The total amount of the alleged fraud was not announced.
The scheme amounted to “a systematic, ongoing course of conduct with the intent to defraud one or more person by false or fraudulent pretenses,” an FHP spokesperson told the Times.
To read the full Tampa Bay Times article, click here.
