Gibsonton Couple Operating Car Dealership Charged In Fraud Scheme

GIBSONTON, FL – A Gibsonton couple who own an exotic car dealership has been arrested following a lengthy fraud investigation by the Florida Highway Patrol.

On Friday, Dec. 20, the FHP arrested Haytham, 61, and Peggy Daas, 59, owners of Heaths Exotic Cars, 9919 U.S. 41 in Gibsonton, and charged them with creating 35 fraudulent contracts for sales of vehicles.

According to the FHP, between the May and December 2018, the married couple created contracts to appear as if customers had legitimately purchased vehicles from them and then sold those vehicle loans to Mid-Atlantic Finance Co., which purchases loans from vehicle dealers after three months of on-time payments by the buyers.

The highway patrol said the couple prepared and signed the fake contracts and then designated employees of the dealership as the buyers without their knowledge. One of the fake contracts was in the name of an employee who died in 2013.

Additionally, the highway patrol said contracts between Heaths Exotic Cars and legitimate buyers were back-dated to reflect several months of payments from the buyers to Heaths Exotic Cars, enabling the dealership to sell the fraudulent loans to Mid-Atlantic Finance Co.

Two vehicles were also put in the names of fake buyers with liens to Heaths Exotic Cars that were never registered. These two transactions were for more than $139,000, which was wired from Mid-Atlantic Finance to a Wells Fargo bank account in the name of Heaths Exotic Cars.

After the completion of the sale of the vehicle loans to Mid-Atlantic Finance, Heaths Exotic Cars received the initial payouts as a credit. However, Heaths Exotic Cars signed an agreement to repurchase loans should certain expectations not be met, including a specified number of payments from the "buyer" to Mid-Atlantic Finance.

To accommodate these conditions, the FHP said the couple obtained money orders from Amscot in the amounts specified in the fake loans sold to Mid-Atlantic Finance, then forged the signatures of the "buyers" on the money orders and delivered them to the finance company.

The couple and some of the dealership's employees also called Mid-Atlantic from a phone app that creates fictitious phone numbers and then pretended to be the "buyers" speaking to a Mid-Atlantic representative to complete the enrollment process required for new customers.

The couple is being held in the Falkenburg Road Jail. Bond is set at $700,000 each.