Vehicle-Fraud Boss Gets 7 Years

The ringleader of the largest vehicle-fraud scheme in DMV history, which cost Southern California lenders and dealerships $8.5 million, has been sentenced to seven years in prison, an Orange County prosecutor said Friday.

Quang Thanh Nguyen, 29, of Westminster pleaded guilty in a Santa Ana courtroom to 40 counts of grand theft auto and one count of conspiracy to commit auto theft. He was sentenced the same day, June 29.

The scheme involved recruiting “straw buyers” who used false credit reports to purchase vehicles from local dealers and then turned them over to Nguyen’s company, Duty Free Car Payment in Garden Grove. Duty Free then leased the vehicles to others while defaulting on the original car loans.

Two other Duty Free partners, Paul Nguyen, 31, of Westminster and Martin Thien An Nguyen, 27, of Fountain Valley are expected to be sentenced within a month. They face two and three years in prison, respectively.

The three men are not related, authorities said.

Three others who allegedly helped run the scheme are believed to have fled the country, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Peter W. Pierce.

About half of the ring’s 16 alleged straw buyers have pleaded guilty; the others have not been tried, Pierce said.

Duty Free recruited the straw buyers with ads in local Vietnamese-language newspapers, promising no-interest car loans of up to $40,000.

They were not offered loans, but instead a commission to participate in the scheme, Pierce said. They were paid $2,000 per vehicle they bought and transferred to Duty Free. Many of the vehicles were Hummers, Cadillacs and other luxury models, Pierce said.

Duty Free falsified DMV registration documents to transfer ownership of the vehicles to the firm, and then leased them to people with poor credit, Pierce said. The company made payments on the cars to the original dealerships for a couple of months before defaulting, he said.

A defrauded Fountain Valley bank sparked the investigation in 2002 with a complaint to the Department of Motor Vehicles.

Since then, about 200 of the 300 vehicles purchased through the scheme have been recovered.

A restitution hearing will be scheduled to try to recover some of the money lost, Pierce said.