Acting Attorney General John J. Hoffman announced that the operator of a used car dealership in Old Bridge has been charged with using fraudulent vehicle titles to sell cars that were damaged in superstorm Sandy to unsuspecting customers. A state Motor Vehicle Commission technician and two employees of the car dealership previously were charged in the criminal scheme.
The Division of Criminal Justice charged the following defendants in connection with the issuance of fraudulent titles and the sale of flood vehicles by Pinky N Brain Corp NJ, doing business as D&D Auto Sales on Englishtown Road, Old Bridge:
Jonathan Olin, 41, of Manalapan, the operator of D&D Auto Sales, was charged on Dec. 20 with theft by deception, conspiracy to commit computer theft and tampering with public records or information.
Jessie Dinome, 29, of Jackson, who worked as a technician at the Freehold Motor Vehicle Agency, was charged on Oct. 28 with computer theft and tampering with public records and information.
Christina Farese, 32, of Old Bridge, a clerk/receptionist employed by D&D Auto Sales, was charged on Dec. 6 with computer theft, tampering with public records and information and forgery.
Jacob Douek, 40, of Staten Island, N.Y., a car salesman at D&D Auto Sales, was charged on Dec. 18 with conspiracy to commit theft by deception, theft by deception and conspiracy to tamper with public records and information.
According to the attorney general, the defendants allegedly carried out the fraudulent scheme from February through July 2013. The dealership acquired eight vehicles at auction that sustained flood damage during Sandy and that were auctioned by an insurance company for parts only. The defendants allegedly had fraudulent “clean” titles issued for the vehicles and sold seven of them to customers who were not told of the flood damage.
“It is shameful any time business operators cheat customers by deceiving them about the soundness of the products they are selling, but this case is especially egregious because the defendants capitalized on superstorm Sandy, an event that caused so much loss in New Jersey, and they did so by crookedly selling vehicles that did not belong on the road at all,” Hoffman said.
According to the attorney general, the eight flood vehicles acquired by Pinky N Brain were all insured by the same company, which paid claims on them as total losses after Sandy. The insurance company had the vehicles auctioned without titles under “bills of sale,” designating them as salvage vehicles to be used for parts only, not for resale. It is alleged that, at Olin’s direction, the defendants fraudulently arranged for “clean” titles to be issued for the vehicles so they could be sold.
It is alleged that Farese, the receptionist at D&D, in conjunction with Dinome, the technician at the Freehold Motor Vehicle Agency, improperly used the Motor Vehicle Commission (MVC) computer system to create false “clean” titles for the flood vehicles, forging the signatures of the prior owners in the process to transfer the titles to D&D. Dinome remains suspended without pay from her job as a result of the charges against her.
D&D allegedly sold seven of the vehicles to customers using the fraudulent clean titles, without disclosing that the vehicles had been damaged in superstorm Sandy. Douek, the car salesman, allegedly misled customers about the cars and about adverse information related to superstorm Sandy that showed up in Car- Fax reports. The seven vehicles were sold by D&D for a total of $86,903.
The charges will be presented to a state grand jury for potential indictment.
According to the attorney general, the case was referred to the Division of Criminal Justice by the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission, which received information from the National Salvage Vehicle Reporting Program and ABC News, which did extensive investigative reporting about flood vehicles that were ending up on used car lots across the country.
The Motor Vehicle Commission initially suspended D&D’s license to do business and seized company records on July 17. The company’s license remains suspended.
ABC News “The Lookout” aired a report in July that included the MVC action against D&D as well as footage of a prior undercover purchase from the dealership of one of the flood vehicles by an ABC producer. She purchased a flood-damaged Ford F-350 truck for $19,999.