OMAHA, Neb.—Investigators are trying to sort out exactly why 86 vehicles worth more than $2.5 million disappeared from a troubled western Nebraska car dealership over the past week.
The cars and trucks have all been located, and one of the three Legacy Auto Sales executives arrested on suspicion of theft appeared in court on Friday.
Lawyers for two of the executives say there was no intent to steal the vehicles, which were recovered in Utah, Las Vegas, Wyoming and Nebraska.
But Scotts Bluff County authorities are treating this as a crime because of the questionable way the vehicles were moved and because Toyota Financing reported the cars stolen.
“It’s still very interesting and highly suspect,” John Childress, Scotts Bluff County’s chief deputy county attorney, said Friday.
Plus, an arrest warrant affidavit says controller Rachel Fait may have embezzled more than $46,000 from the dealership.
Fait, 37, and Legacy’s owner Allen Patch, 52, remained jailed in Tooele County, Utah, on Friday. They were arrested separately in Utah earlier this week and are both scheduled to appear in court on Tuesday.
The dealership’s 53-year-old general manager, Rick Covello, appeared in Scotts Bluff County Court Friday morning where his bond was set at $4,000. Covello posted bond and has been released from jail.
Covello’s Scottsbluff attorney, Stacy Nossaman-Petitt, said she believes the charges may eventually be dropped against her client once the case is sorted out.
“His position will be that this was an effort of his bosses to sell these vehicles and get out from under debt,” Nossaman-Petitt said.
Patch’s attorney, Robert Hughes of Salt Lake City, said his client believed he had a right to sell the vehicles, and he intended to pay Toyota for them once they were all sold.
Patch brought most of the cars back to Utah because he used to own several dealerships in that state and believed he could sell the cars more quickly and at a better price there, Hughes said.
The missing vehicles were all Fords and Toyotas. The Fords had been put on transporter trucks and taken away Saturday, and the Toyotas were shipped out late Monday.
Police got involved on Tuesday after a representative for Toyota Financing contacted police to report the vehicles stolen, according to an arrest warrant affidavit. Two employees of the dealership also contacted police that day with concerns, and the top three executives from the dealership disappeared after cleaning out their desks and homes in Scottsbluff.
A change-of-address form had also been filed to make Legacy Auto’s mailing address a post office box in Fort Collins, Colo.
The Toyota representative told police the only reason a car dealer would obtain temporary titles and remove vehicles from the lot, as Legacy did, would be “to run and convert them into cash,” according to the affidavit.
Childress said the total number of cars involved increased from 81 to 86 Friday because five more were found in Utah where the majority of the cars were taken.
Here’s a breakdown of where the cars were found: six were at the Scottsbluff airport; one was in the Wal-Mart parking lot in Evanston, Wyo.; a truckload of nine vehicles was in Las Vegas; Covello drove one to turn himself into Scottsbluff authorities; and the remaining 69 were at several dealerships in Utah.
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