The former owner of the Murfreesboro-based Nashville Motor Cars Premier dealearship was sentenced to two years in prison.
Chief U.S. District Judge Waverly D. Crenshaw Fr. sentenced 49-year-old Randl Arthur Roth Tuesday. He defrauded customers and his business partners of more than $550,000.
Roth was charged in April of this year and pleaded guilty on May 31, 2017, to conspiracy to commit bank and wire fraud.
According to court documents, Roth devised a scheme to defraud the dealership’s customers beginning in 2014; the banks that financed customer’s car purchases; and individuals and companies that financed the dealership’s inventory.
Roth and his co-conspirators carried out the scheme by representing to numerous customers and their banks that Nashville Motor Cars had clean titles to the cars they sold when, in fact, Roth knew that there were existing liens on those cars.
He also represented to private investors, when seeking additional credit, that certain automobiles were part of the dealership’s inventory and would secure the loans, but in fact, the vehicles had already been sold.
Roth submitted fraudulent, duplicate car title applications to the Rutherford County Clerk’s Office and provided a copy of the applications or duplicate titles to the dealership’s inventory financiers.
Along with the two-year prison sentence, he was also sentenced to one year of supervised release at the conclusion of his prison sentence and ordered to pay $595,569.72 in restitution.
This case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation with assistance from the Murfreesboro Police Department and the Tennessee Highway Patrol Criminal Investigation Division. Assistant U.S. Attorney Henry C. Leventis prosecuted the case.
