Warrant Issued for Man in Alleged Car Sales Scam : Crime: The owner of a Garden Grove firm is accused of cheating people out of thousands of dollars by acting as a middleman in illegal auto deals.

The Orange County district attorney has issued an arrest warrant for the owner of a Garden Grove company accused of cheating at least 20 people of thousands of dollars by illegally acting as a middleman on used car sales and keeping money that was supposed to be applied as down payments.

A felony warrant for Thomas Charles Carter, 41, of El Toro, was issued last week, but the suspect had not surrendered to authorities by late Monday, said Rande King, senior special investigator with the state Department of Motor Vehicles.

Carter worked with three Orange County men, King said, who were arrested in November and charged with multiple felony counts of illegal auto subleasing, grand theft and acting as unlicensed car dealers.

Those arrested in November were Steven Anthony Drapeau, 27, of La Mirada; Orlando DeLeon Pangilinan, 33, of El Toro, and Robert Jay Papkin, 34, of Costa Mesa. A preliminary hearing for the suspects is set for Wednesday in Orange County Superior Court in Santa Ana.

“He (Carter) is not a new player. We were just unable to get enough evidence to prove that he was the owner of this scam,” King said.

DMV investigators subpoenaed the business’s records at a bank in Orange and were able to trace Carter as the main operator of the account, King said. Carter also has used the alias of Thomas Cartagena, King said.

According to King, Carter’s now-defunct Santa Ana business, U.S. Financial, rented an office and hired workers who made phone calls to people who were trying to sell their cars through newspaper advertisements. The suspects told the car owners that they would sell their vehicles for them to buyers who had bad credit histories. The buyers were told that they were to make car payments to the original owners for six months, after which new financing would be arranged. The buyers were charged $1,000 to $4,000. Of that amount, only about $200 per transaction was to be the suspects’ fee, and the balance allegedly was to go toward a down payment in arranging a new loan, King said.

Instead, King said, Carter and the other suspects kept all of the fees received from the new buyers.

After six months in operation in Santa Ana, Carter’s outfit closed and moved in July to a new location at 9140 Trask Ave. in Garden Grove, operating under the name North American Financial, King said. “There was no way for the buyers or owners to legally get their money or cars back,” he said.

King said the DMV is investigating three other Orange County companies, in Santa Ana, Irvine and Garden Grove, and one in Diamond Bar that are suspected of operating illegal car subleasing scams.