According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, an Atlanta car salesman by the name of Philip Swindall stayed true to his name and swindled his business partner, banks and car buyers out of millions of dollars and has been sentenced to seven years in prison. Philip Swindall’s long story of lies and fraud started back in 2004 when Swindall borrowed $8.2 million from what is now Wells Fargo, to open his Atlanta Chrysler Dodge dealership. Swindall also persuaded his business partner to put up $4.7 million worth of collateral including the partner’s $2.3 million Colorado home. By the summer of 2005, Swindall was more than $3.5 million in debt and claimed that the large amount of debt was due to late payments from a fleet customer. It turned out that the fleet customer had actually paid on time, but Swindall used the money to open a new dealership and finance his family’s extravagant lifestyle instead of paying his creditors. His business partner knew nothing of the debt, and eventually lost the Colarado home he used as collateral.
In 2009, Swindall opened a new dealership and bought the cars from various dealers, paying for them with insufficient fund checks. Swindall then took those cars, sold them on eBay but never provided the buyers with a title, car or ever paid the dealers he bought the cars from. Swindall pocketed over $490,000 off of his 2009 scheme. Swindall has been sentenced to 7 years and 6 months in federal prison for bank fraud, wire fraud and aggravated identity theft and has been ordered to pay $8,487,491.70 in restitution.
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