Wilson Ford’s Business Tactics Subject of Probe : Investigators Claim Sales Staff Trained to Lie, Cheat and Pressure Customers

One of Southern California’s largest auto dealerships conspired to defraud consumers, first with false advertising delivered by late-night pitchman Ralph Williams and then with sales representatives trained in deceit, a state investigator contends in court documents filed Friday.

The documents, examined by Orange County Superior Court Judge John J. Ryan last week in support of warrants used to search Wilson Ford in Huntington Beach on Sunday, described the dealership as a business where teams of salespeople worked to “wear down” and “manipulate” customers.

“It appears . . . Wilson Ford is stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from car buyers” by “relying on the vulnerability of the car-buying public,” state Justice Department investigator Carlos C. Martinez said in a report that was among the documents.

Investigators contend that Williams’ ads lured customers into the dealership by offering cars at below factory invoice prices, when Williams knew that once they arrived, salespeople would lie to them and get them to sign contracts with hidden costs and inflated prices for such things as buyer protection plans.

Martinez, who is leading the joint Justice Department and Department of Motor Vehicles investigation of Wilson Ford, maintains that the dealership’s operators trained sales personnel to deceive and manipulate customers. He identified Williams as the person directing day-to-day operations of Wilson Ford.

No one has been charged in the case. JoAnn Black, a supervisor with the DMV investigations office in Orange County, said investigators are still studying the documents they seized and had not yet decided the next course of action.

Still Owes Millions

Williams, who has owned car dealerships in Texas, Washington state and Canada, as well as in California, became well known in the early 1960s when he began plugging his California dealerships as many as 70 times a night on television.

However, he has had occasional troubles with law enforcement authorities and officials who regulate car dealerships. In Washington, he still owes consumers millions of dollars that were awarded in a judgment against him related to a dealership in Seattle, according to Jay Uchida of the Washington state attorney general’s office.

In California, the DMV in 1969 twice suspended his dealer’s license and in 1983 refused him a salesman’s license. That decision was overturned, however, by an administrative law judge. He currently has a valid sales license.

In addition to the Martinez report, the filed documents include statements from former Wilson Ford managers and salesmen, reports from undercover investigators who posed as car buyers while wearing hidden microphones and written complaints from customers.

Neither Williams nor the owners of Wilson Ford could be reached for comment. Marshall G. Mintz, the lawyer who represents the dealership, and Rock Armstrong, its business manager, said they could not comment on Martinez’s allegations because they had not read the documents.

Mintz said the dealership has remained in compliance with a $50,000 judgment the state Attorney General’s office obtained in 1986. That judgment prohibits the dealership from engaging in numerous misleading practices, including deceptive advertising. “It has never been called to Wilson Ford’s attention that it was not complying with the judgment,” Mintz said.

Williams has no ownership interest in the dealership, but is its general manager, Mintz said. The dealership is owned by others, he said.

During the search last Sunday, which lasted more than five hours, investigators removed from the dealership huge amounts of computer software and hardware and written records, some of which was retrieved from trash cans and a dumpster behind the dealership.

The list of seized documents filled 55 pages.

A statement from a former employee that was included in the documents filed Friday said that original quotes to customers were always done on paper or on computer printouts that were never given to the customers. The salespeople were instructed, he said, to throw away the paper or printout as soon as a deal was closed.