Former owner of a vehicle repair shop sentenced for odometer and title fraud

Paul Robinson from Lawrenceville, Georgia has been sentenced to 37 months in prison followed by three years of supervision upon release for his involvement in odometer tampering as well as title fraud. Paul's sentence was made in the Eastern District of Virginia. The judge also ordered Paul to pay restitution worth $320,797.82 to those who bought vehicles from him that had their vehicle's odometers rolled back.

How Paul committed his crimes

Paul was an owner of Affordable Auto Body Repair Shop located in Chesapeake in the state of Virginia.

He oversaw the purchase of high-mileage vehicles and the altering of the vehicle's odometers so as to reduce the car's mileage readings. He and others also acquired Virginia motor vehicle titles that had false odometer readings, he then used the titles to sell his cars to unsuspecting buyers. According to the judge who read his sentence, customers ended up paying more for cars they thought had low mileage; it also subjected them to incurring high repair costs for the vehicles as well as kept them in danger because they were not aware they were driving high mileage vehicles.

According to investigators, the fraud was committed from the year 2012 and 2014 on more than 100 vehicles. Some odometers were deducted up to 150,000 miles on their mileage readings.

A former title clerk also pleaded guilty last year to helping Paul secure motor vehicle fraudulently and committing title fraud. He was fined $219,552.82 and sentenced to five years in prison. He is also serving his first year in home detention.

Odometer fraud

Odometer fraud is a practice of rolling back a car's mileage meters so that a car can appear to have traveled little distance.

It is also referred to as busting miles in the United States. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that 450,000 vehicles are sold each year with false odometer readings. This type of fraud cost over $1 billion annually to unsuspecting car buyers. Odometer fraud is commonly done to cars that were previously used in the car rental business.

Mechanical odometers are hard to tamper with when compared to digital odometers.

A recent odometer prosecution

Late last month, two Georgia residents were sentenced to 12 months in prison and three years of supervised release for title fraud and rolling back odometers. They both owned and operated a Georgina corporation called Lifestyle Auto Broker LLC. They committed the crimes in the year 2012 and 2013.