Law enforcement officials in Romania, the Czech Republic, the United Kingdom and Canada arrested six Romanian nationals today for their alleged involvement in a sophisticated multimillion-dollar auto fraud internet scheme.
The U.S. Department of Justice said the defendants were responsible for saturating Internet marketplace websites including eBay, Cars.com, AutoTrader.com and CycleTrader.com with detailed advertisements for cars, motorcycles, boats and other high-value items generally priced in the $10,000 to $45,000 range. Unbeknownst to the buyers, however, the merchandise did not exist.
A criminal complaint unsealed today in U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of New York charges Romanian nationals Emil Butoi, 34, Aurel Cojorcaru, 43, Nicolae Ghebosila, 43, Cristea Mircea, 30, Ion Pieptea, 36, and Nicolae Simion, 37, and Albanian national Fabian Meme, 42, each with one count of wire fraud conspiracy and one count of money laundering conspiracy. Butoi, Cojocaru, Meme, Mircea, Pieptea and Simion are also each charged with one count of passport fraud conspiracy.
Butoi, Cojorcaru, Ghebosila, Mircea, Pieptea and Simion were arrested today. Meme is already incarcerated in the Czech Republic. The United States will seek the defendants’ extradition to under international treaties. According to the complaint, it is estimated that the defendants earned over $3 million from the auto fraud scheme.
If convicted, the defendants each face a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison on the wire fraud conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy counts, and 10 years in prison on the passport fraud conspiracy count.
The defendants allegedly employed co-conspirators who corresponded with victim buyers by email, sending fraudulent certificates of title and other information designed to extract money from the victims. Sometimes, the defendants allegedly pretended to sell cars from nonexistent auto dealerships in the United States and even created phony websites for these fictitious dealerships.
In at least one transaction involving Ghebosila, the “seller” allegedly pretended to be the widow of an Iraq war veteran who was selling her family’s mobile home so that she could care for her children. In other transactions, the defendants allegedly duped victims into sending tens of thousands of dollars for non-existent vehicles, including Lexus, Audi, Ford, Chevrolet, Dodge, Toyota, Mercedes, Porsche and BMW cars; Big Dog Mastiff and Ninja motorcycles; a Fleetwood Storm motor home; and boats.
According to the complaint, after the “sellers” reached an agreement with the victim buyers, they would often email them invoices purporting to be from Amazon Payments, PayPal or other online payment services, with wire transfer instructions. However, the defendants and their co-conspirators allegedly used counterfeit service marks in designing the invoices so that they would appear identical to communications from legitimate payment services. The fraudulent invoices directed the buyers to send money to the American bank accounts that had been opened with fraudulent passports.
“As a result of extensive cooperation between U.S. and European law enforcement officials, the defendants have been charged with a scheme to defraud unsuspecting Americans of millions of dollars,” said Assistant Attorney General Breuer. “The Department of Justice is committed to finding and prosecuting Internet fraud aggressively, wherever it happens and however hard the perpetrators work to conceal their crimes.”
