Car dealership’s license yanked after customers forced to pay bogus fees

A CAR dealership has been shuttered after its owner was accused of forcing customers to pay bogus fees and allegedly stealing tax money.

The manager of a used car dealership allegedly kept over $131,000 of taxes on vehicle sales that should’ve instead gone to the government.

Puyallup Truck and RV Sales, just 10 miles southeast of Tacoma, Washington, closed its doors in 2022 when the Department of Licensing found shady business practices during an investigation.

Alarm bells went off when they realized the owner, Stanley Stevens, was found guilty in 2011 of conspiracy to commit odometer fraud.

Investigators then began to suspect Stevens recruited his nephew, who was only 19 at the time, to become the straw owner of the dealership in 2016, meaning Stevens hid his identity as the true owner so he could get a business license.

Stevens, 41, was then charged with felony theft for failing to give up funds he made while operating the business.

Cops allege Stevens pocketed $1,897,460 of the business’ funds into bank accounts controlled by him and his wife from 2019 to 2022.

The dealership only reported $27,000 in revenue to the government during that time, according to McClatchy affiliate the Tacoma News Tribune.

Investigators found that a majority of the business’ customers found the cars for sale on third-party sellers like Craiglist and Facebook Marketplace.

Customers typically paid in cash, court records said.

Buyers told investigators if they tried to pay with credit cards, customers were told the service fee could be up to 30%.

The business also charged customers a 10% sales tax – even though the city’s retail sales tax was only 9.9% at the time.

Stevens allegedly kept $131,678 in sales tax collected through the transactions.

Only $2,758 of that money was submitted to the Department of Revenue.

Additionally, investigators found several customers reported writing separate checks for sales tax made out to a separate business.

When investigators looked into the LLC, they found the business was unregistered, didn’t have a license, and didn’t report income or pay taxes.

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Source: Kelley Blue Book

They then found the business owner was another of Stevens’ nephews.

Court records accused PTRS of “migrating their business identity” over to the unregistered company when they found their dealership was about to be revoked.

‘NON-EXISTENT’ FILES

Additionally, Stanley told a tax auditor he previously used car dealer file folders, also called jackets, for each sale, but about 174 of the files were stolen from his clerk’s car.

However, when investigators searched the dealership in February 2022, they found financial documents for secret bank accounts.

They also found hundreds of folders in a garbage bag hidden under several boxes.

“The PTRS sales jacket filing system was non-existent,” the investigator said in court docs, according to the News Tribune.

Investigators found that Stevens’ nephew didn’t control the finances or manage the dealership, despite being the business owner.

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