Odometer-Rigging Scheme Said to Have 400 Victims

Search warrants were served over the weekend in an investigation of a sophisticated pickup truck odometer-tampering operation that state officials say defrauded 400 Southern California customers and 44 used car dealers out of $500,000.

The case, which involves accusations of “odometer-spinning” in Los Angeles County and at least four other Western states, is the largest of its type in Southern California in years, according to state Department of Motor Vehicles officials.

“Spinning” or “rolling” odometers refers to the illegal practice of tampering with car dials that show the number of miles a vehicle is driven. The crime--in which automobiles and trucks are sold with their odometers “spun” backward to falsely portray lower mileage--is a federal offense with a possible prison term of two years.

In one sale cited in the search warrants served Friday and Saturday by the state DMV, a 1985 Ford pickup with 166,985 miles on it allegedly showed only 48,371 miles on the odometer when it was sold to a Lancaster used car dealer.

Vito Scattaglia, the DMV chief of investigations for north and east Los Angeles County, said that the four-month probe has helped spur a statewide crackdown on odometer fraud.

“Odometer rolling has always been going on,” he said. “We have kind of taken--as much as I hate to admit it--a Band-Aid-type approach.” But now, he said, “we are going all out with border checkpoints, federal assistance, a document monitoring program. You are going to see more of these cases.”

DMV investigator Phil Chlopek stressed that no charges have been filed and the investigation is expected to be completed within nine months. Chlopek said that the DMV is working with the federal Department of Transportation and will eventually turn the investigation over to the U.S. attorney’s office for prosecution.

Chlopek said that the operation described in the search warrants allegedly bought high-mileage pickup trucks in Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma and other southwestern states and imported them to California. The trucks were spruced up, their odometers were rolled back and the vehicles were then sold to used car dealers with faked paper work showing low mileage.

Most dealers then unwittingly sold the trucks to consumers at inflated prices, investigators said.

Working out of a cramped office in Newhall, Chlopek said the investigation required tracking ownership of the trucks, many of which were previously owned by car leasing firms and oil companies. Investigators also obtained out-of-state sales documents showing mileage at every ownership change and discovered discrepancies after the trucks passed through the hands of the suspects.

Chlopek and DMV investigator Charlene Arp found that pickups with tampered odometers were sold to 44 area dealerships. Four were in Los Angeles, three each in Downey, South Gate and San Bernardino and two each in Anaheim, Lancaster, Riverside, West Covina, Ontario, San Diego and San Jose, as well as dealers in Monterey Park, Lawndale, Hawthorne, Redondo Beach, Costa Mesa, Culver City, Bellflower, Orange, Santa Ana, Burbank, Fontana, LaVerne, Fowler, Fountain Valley, Fresno, Santa Cruz and Covina.

Some of the dealers may face sanctions, but Scattaglia and Chlopek praised two truck dealerships--Person Ford in LaVerne and Lancaster AMC Jeep Eagle--for cooperating in the investigation. Lancaster AMC and Person Ford bought about 70 pickup trucks from the group, Chlopek said.

“This has been a tremendously sobering experience,” said John Pagnoli, general sales manager of the Lancaster dealership. “We were taken by real professionals.”

Chlopek said that the DMV urges dealers to contact customers about the alleged odometer fraud. “We tell them we will contact (the customers) eventually. It’s kind of a veiled threat,” he said.

Pagnoli said his dealership had contacted each of the 20 or so individuals who had bought the suspect pickups and offered the choice of returning the truck or taking a cash settlement. “Very few gave the truck up,” he said.

Cash settlements to others ranged from $1,000 to $2,000, depending on the age and condition of the truck, he said.

Named in the search warrants are Truck Auto Sales in Ontario, owner C.P. Mercer and his wife, Mattie Aline Mercer, their home in Chino, Mercer’s son Phillip of Bristow, Okla., Yiser Dean Dabbs of Fullerton, Elvia Zapien’s V.I.P. Registration DMV Service in Pico Rivera and Auction Express Title Service in Placentia.

Reached Sunday, Mattie Aline Mercer declined to discuss the case. Don Mercer, who identified himself as a brother of C.P. Mercer, said that “as long as I have worked (at Truck Auto), I have never seen anything like that.”