State Seizes 173 Unregistered Rental Cars : Taxes: Major Rent-A-Car told customers the temporary Florida plates on its cars were adequate because the firm is based there. California is owed about $340,000 in registration fees.

The California Highway Patrol on Friday announced the seizure of 173 cars from a car rental agency that failed to register its fleet with the state, costing California about $340,000 in registration fees and penalties.

The cars were seized at Major Rent-A-Car outlets in San Diego, Los Angeles and the Bay Area beginning last Monday, said CHP Lt. David Stuflick. Officers seized 22 cars in San Diego, 50 in Los Angeles and 101 in the Bay Area.

Stuflick said investigators have determined that Major Rent-A-Car of Orlando, Fla., arranged for the financing and delivery of about 500 cars to Florida.

In Florida, the company obtained temporary registration permits for the vehicles. The cars were then trucked to California and put into use as rental cars without ever obtaining the proper registration.

Instead, the 20-day temporary registration permits issued by Florida were attached to the cars’ rear windows, Stuflick said, adding that the expiration dates on many of the paper permits were altered repeatedly.

Stuflick said Major Rent-A-Car has been operating in California since last year.

The officers of the Florida-based company are Charles Fortuna, Vincent L. Fortuna and Vincent C. Fortuna. They couldn’t be reached for comment.

Major Rent-A-Car came to the attention of authorities in late March when a vacationing federal prosecutor, Gordon Cecil, rented a car from the company in San Diego and noticed that the cars bore the temporary Florida permits, Stuflick said.

When Cecil asked about the permits, employees told him the company was based in Florida and therefore was not required to register the cars in California. California requires that residents or companies doing business in the state register their vehicles here.

Cecil passed the information along to a friend in the CHP, which began an investigation.

The lead investigator on the case, Robert Petrachek, said he went to the company’s San Diego office at the Ramada Inn in Old Town and pretended he was a customer. When he asked about the permits, he was told the same thing that Cecil had been told.

Petrachek then identified himself as an officer and was told by employees that they had been ordered to alter the temporary permits and to tell customers who asked that the cars did not have to have California registration.

That was the same thing he was told by company employees in Los Angeles when he pretended to be a customer at those offices, and the same thing other CHP undercover officers were told in the Bay Area, Petrachek said.

While he was investigating the company, Petrachek also discovered that Major was charging sales tax on the rentals. But when he checked with the Board of Equalizationm, he found that the company had never obtained authorization to collect sales tax and had never passed the money collected on to the state.

“They were collecting the state tax from their customers and never passing it along,” Petrachek said. “They were making an automatic profit.”

Major Rent-A-Car has defaulted on several of its creditors, and when CHP officers began seizing the vehicles on Monday, they found that creditors had taken possession of some of the cars and had parked them on side streets around Old Town in an attempt to keep them out of the company’s hands, Petrachek said.

Employees who cooperated with investigators told them that some cars had been driven out of the state by Major Rent-A-Car, as well as by some of the company’s creditors.

Investigators also seized company documents on Monday. Bill Gengler, a spokesman for the Department of Motor Vehicles, said authorities have accounted for about 319 vehicles. The DMV will attempt to collect registration fees and penalties for those cars, Gengler said. The DMV will also try to recoup the sales taxes for the Board of Equalization.

The San Diego County district attorney’s office is waiting for the CHP, the DMV and the state Board of Equalization to finish their investigation, said Don Canning, a deputy district attorney. “It’s still too early to tell if there are any criminal aspects to the case,” Canning said.

Petrachek said investigators believe there are about 50 cars rented by unsuspecting Major customers on the road in Southern California. People who have who have done business with Major Rent-A-Car or who have any of the company’s cars in their possession are asked to call Petrachek at the CHP Border Division office, (619) 237-6811.