In U.S. District Court in Erie yesterday a car dealer and his finance manager each pleaded guilty to a single charge of fraud conspiracy, for trying to bilk Indiana-based S&T Bank out of payments for the purchase of automobiles.
51-year-old Andrew Gabler of Harborcreek, who owns Lakeside Auto Sales and Lakeside Chevrolet, and 49-year-old Chad Bednarski of Fairview worked the scheme between January of 2015 and January of last year.
Investigators found that Gabler falsified documents indicating that customers had made down payments and inflated his customers’ incomes on loan applications. He also sold extended warranties to customers and kept the money rather than turn it in, and he and Bednarski falsely reported sales to GM in order to collect rebates. The two did not inform S&T of the sale of vehicles under the bank’s floor plan financing program in an attempt to delay and avoid making payments to the bank.
The two defendants will be sentenced in January. The maximum penalty is 30 years in prison and fines as high as a million dollars.
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