CLEVELAND, Ga. - A former used car dealer who worked from Cornelia has been sentenced to federal prison over a $3 million wire fraud scheme.
According to the prosecutors, 56-year-old Mitchell C. Simpson operated Mitch Simpson Motors in Cleveland between 2012 through early 2019. He was provided a revolving line of credit from three floor-plan lenders: Dealer Financial Holdings LLC, Americash Advance, Inc., and Floorplan Xpress, LLC-OK.
Those revolving lines of credit allowed Simpson to purchase a fleet of vehicles to re-sell to his customers.
The three lenders had contracts with Simpson that required him to provide them with a description of any vehicle he wanted to buy, including the vehicle identification number (VIN) and amount of the loan requested.
The prosecutors argued that Simpson would use a single vehicle as collateral for more than one floor-plan loan. In the used-car industry, that fraudulent practice is called "double floor-planning and triple floor-planning."
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In addition, the prosecutors said Simpson wouldn't always pay the lenders back when a car was sold. He allegedly "engaged in a shell game with vehicle titles and did not always provide truthful information."
"Simpson lied to the very people who were the lifeline to his small business," said FBI Atlanta Senior Supervisory Resident Agent Mitchell Jackson.
As a result, the lenders lost more than $3 million to the scheme.
He was sentenced to three years, five months in prison to be followed by three years of supervised release. He was also ordered to pay restitution in the amount of $105,803.70.
The FBI investigated this case before it was turned over to U.S. District Judge Steve C. Jones.