PITTSFIELD, Mass. — A used-car dealership has been shut down because of alleged misconduct.
On Monday, the Licensing Board unanimously revoked the dealer's license for Wheels and Deals Automotive on East Street after hearing over an hour of testimony about unethical — and possibly illegal — business operations from police, the Registry of Motor Vehicles and customers.
Manager Breana ONeil attributed it to a former employee, Devon Fitts. Last year, Fitts' dealership D&K Affordable Motors surrendered its license after being accused of forgery for the second time.
Chair Thomas Campoli said the situation has been disgraceful in terms of what happened to people who bought cars from Wheels and Deals and that ONeil should have been more involved.
"When your name is on the license, you are responsible for what happens in the business, and as Chairman Campoli says to the managers that come up when they run a bar, if something happened in the bar you are responsible and anything that happened at the dealership really is your responsibility," board member Kathy Amuso said.
"And to have such egregious claims in such a short time of being in business, things do happen but there weren't any remedies applied, the documentation is incorrect, and so it comes down to they already had problems and then they went to your dealership and they continued to do things that they shouldn't have done."
Police Lt. Marc Maddalena requested a show-cause hearing to revoke the license. The dealership obtained a Class 2 auto dealer license last year. Accusations included inaccurate reporting to the RMV, inaccurate marketing of available cars to customers, and forgery.
Maddalena reported that there have been 10 small claims cases against Wheels and Deals since January, which is an issue that he only saw with D&K. He said D&K's former manager Kaitlyn Rathbun and Fitts were "kind of running the show" for ONeil.
Pittsfield RMV Assistant Manager Karen Kaveney-Murray said Fitts and another woman who is assumed to be his partner reported that all the cars were sold for $1,000 each while customers were paying much more. Kaveney-Murray presented customers' bills of sale for thousands of dollars more than the recorded $1,000.
The state requires a 6.25 percent sales tax on vehicles.
"If you get a loan of $13,000 and they are borrowing the sales tax with the price of the car," she said. "They borrow the money plus the sales tax of the $13,000 and then what happens is they send the check directly to the dealership so when the dealership goes to the registry they are stating they paid $1,000 so they're going to pay the 6.25 percent of the $1,000. So what happened for the rest of the money?"
The RMV began noticing problems with the dealership at the end of last year.
"There is not a $1,000 car," Kaveney-Murray said when Campoli asked how often the RMV sees a car being sold from a dealership for that cheap.
Aside from the sales tax issue, she has heard many complaints about cars breaking down soon after purchasing from the dealership and being met with refusal or aggression when they ask for the issues to be fixed.
Sabrina Rodriquez said she was lured in to buy a $7,000 car with the promise of a $1,500 down payment despite having a low credit score. She obtained Fitts' name after the check he wrote to register her car bounced.
Rodriquez almost immediately noticed issues with her car and was communicating with a person she assumed was Fitts to get the issues remedied. She said he picked up the car to fix it a couple of times but the issues persisted.
"I did buy a car that has a check engine light on, it has a traction control light on, it has ABS light on, it has an engine lever tick," she said.
"I'm running it until the wheels fall off. I'm trying to financially figure out how I'm going to afford to pay for everything."
Rodriquez has taken Fitts and the dealership to small claims court for $7,000, a process that has been going on such March without a resolution.
She also claimed that her signature was forged on the transfer of title paper that was handed into the registry.
An older customer who has also taken the dealership to small claims said she purchased a car for $4,000 and, after noticing issues right away, was not able to resolve the situation with the dealership.
"When you're dealing with that type of clientele and within this business, you have to have some type of value and ethics and humanity about you," Maddalena said.
"You have to understand and know that the cars you're selling may come back and they may not be the best ones out there and you have to make it right when they do come back to you and that's clearly not what's going on here on top of everything else regardless of screwing the state over out of tax money."
ONeil's attorney Ahmed Ismail said she met Fitts through friends and was not aware of what he was doing with her business or of his past.
"She had no way of knowing that something wrong is happening," he said. "Again, she trusted him. As far as I'm concerned, she's also a victim of Fitts given the fact that she's on the verge of losing her license."
Ismail said ONeil told Maddalena last week that Fitts had been fired and that a warranty is not required for cars over 125,000 miles.
The attorney said ONeil wants to remedy whatever damages her former employee caused.
"We are not denying any wrongdoing by Mr. Fitts," he said.
Board member Jody Phillips said the situation is disturbing to her and it is unfortunate for the people who bought cars and for ONeil.
"And it's unfortunate because, for lack of a better word, this is not the first time we're seeing a connection between dealerships," she said.
Campoli admitted that it is not unusual to see suits against car dealerships but said, "everything else here, to me, seems unusual."
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