Car salesman Shahid Sheikh sold a black Kia Sorrento, a modest SUV with a base price of about $32,000, to a customer for more than $47,000.
Included in the deal were many outrageous extras: $2,500 for a BMW grill that normally sells for $995, and $1,000 each for rustproofing, fabric guarding and undercoating — “excessive” add-ons that were in some cases more than double the usual price, says John Van Rooyen, at the time general sales manager at 401 Dixie Kia in Mississauga.
The 2004 deal, which earned Sheikh about $1,700 commission, is part of a $1.71 million fraud where imaginary clients as well as those with bad credit, fake insurance slips, phony T4s, and doctored employment and income records were used to sell 41 vehicles. Only 11 were ever recovered.
Sheikh, 50, and two others face charges in a trial which began Monday in a Brampton court.
Van Rooyen testified Sheikh’s connection to the Punjabi community made him an excellent salesman. “I welcomed him at the business. He was great for business because many of the people coming in couldn’t speak English.”
In fact, some of Sheikh’s customers didn’t even exist, the Crown contends. Others were paid for the use of their names and in one case, the identity obtained from a stolen purse was altered from a male to a female and then used for two vehicle purchases, court was told.
The Scotia Bank, Royal Bank, TD Bank, HSBC Bank, Nissan Canada Financial Corp. and the Wells Fargo Financial Institution are on the hook for the lost funds, court was told. Of the 41 loans, all but one went into default.
Sheikh committed most of the fraudulent car transactions with Lynn Fuller, business manager at Airport Nissan in Mississauga, between Oct. 1, 2004, and Aug. 31, 2006, says Crown prosecutor Cam Watson.
Fuller “was intimately involved with Sheikh in those 40 deals,” Watson told court in his opening address.
Another man, Ranjit Bisram, is also accused of purchasing several vehicles in deals arranged by Sheikh and Fuller using fake company information and other fraudulent documentation. On his credit application, he claimed to be the owner of a financially sound Brampton trucking firm when in fact he was an unemployed truck driver whose submitted T4 statements vastly overstated his real income.
Bisram is alleged to have fraudulently purchased five vehicles from Sheikh and Fuller, cars that were 100 per cent financed through different lending institutions. He later reported three of them stolen.
It’s the Crown’s case that Sheikh, as a salesman, wrote vehicle purchase agreements at Airport Nissan and Fuller, as business manger, wrote the sales contracts and secured funding from various lenders.
Fuller completed the paperwork, some legitimate and some fraudulent, and submitted documentation to auto and finance companies, Watson said.
“She at the time was the sole business manager at Airport Nissan and she signed vehicle purchase agreements and sought funding for the 40 vehicles,” he said.
Fuller earned 22 per cent commission from the sales and extras such as extended warranties and rustproofing, Watson said.
“Sheik and Fuller worked together to produce vehicle purchase agreements that contained fraudulent documents,” Watson said. “The two orchestrated how otherwise unqualified purchasers with bad credit qualified for financing. This was done by boosting numbers, increasing pay cheques with elevated incomes or creating outright fraudulent documents.”
A former accused, Akbar Warris, is expected to be the Crown’s star witness and reveal the inner workings of the elaborate scam.
Warris produced false insurance slips, phony T4s and other fraudulent documents for Sheikh and Fuller. He also arranged for people to be paid a fee so their names could be used to purchase vehicles they never actually bought, Watson told the court.
Warris’s charges were dropped in return for testifying at this trial, which is expected to last four to six weeks.
Warris “was directed by Sheikh to produce false insurance documents from Nordic and Award insurance companies,” Watson said.
Warris attended a meeting at an Oakville pub where fraudulent business plans were discussed and false companies, such as Leo Enterprises and Tri-Star Cargo, were created by him to produce false pay and employment records for a fee, the Crown said.
“He will testify Fuller directed him to increase the dollar values on pay slips to increase the credit of otherwise unworthy credit applicants.”
Court heard that Sheikh and Fuller also prepared sales documents for Andre Chiarato in June 2006. He purchased four vehicles worth more than $168,000 with 100 per cent financing from Nissan and Wells Fargo. Chiarato and the vehicles vanished and a warrant is out for his arrest.
Initially, eight people were to be tried, but four had their charges withdrawn. Another man is to be tried separately.
The trial continues before Justice Casey Hill.
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