In the United States District Court in Burlington, Vermont, Robert McLane pleaded guilty this week to a charge of mail fraud. A common and boring-sounding crime, but he had managed to get a bunch of cash into his PayPal account by selling $575,000 worth of (mainly) lift kits for trucks on Facebook. The problem is, the Formula Nissan dealership he worked for at the time paid for the Titan and Frontier lift kits without knowing it.
According to the Vermont DoJ report, between March 2019 and September 2022, McLane was employed by the Formula Nissan dealership in Burlington McLane, where he served as the Parts Manager and then the Director of Parts and Service. In those positions, McLane oversaw the parts and service departments, and duties included ordering, receiving, and paying for automotive parts needed for Formula Nissan’s operations.
Nissan
Nissan Motor Corporation is a Japanese automaker founded in 1933 and the parent automaker of Infiniti and formerly Datsun. Nissan produces a wide variety of mass-market vehicles, including popular SUVs like the Rogue, sedans like the Sentra, and trucks like the Nissan Frontier, but is also responsible for iconic sports cars like the Nissan Z and GT-R. Since 1999, Nissan has been part of the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance (the name changed when Mitsubishi joined in 2016).
- Founded
- 26 December 1933
- Founder
- Yoshisuke Aikawa
- Headquarters
- Nishi-ku, Yokohama
- Owned By
- Publicly Traded
- Current CEO
- Makoto Uchida
Nissan’s Ordering System Was Exploited
However, instead of using the software-based dealer management parts ordering system, McLane bypassed it and went directly to Nissan North America. Then, he simply didn’t enter the stock into Formula Nissan’s inventory of parts on hand. Instead, he sold the parts on Facebook “at prices substantially discounted from their wholesale cost to Formula Nissan.”
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The wholesale cost of lift kits for Nissan trucks is typically around $2,300 to $2,900 each. The total cost to Formula Nissan is calculated to be at least $575,000. However, as well as facing up to 20 years of imprisonment, McLane is also looking at a fine of up to twice the gross loss caused by the fraud. To add insult to injury, he shipped the lift kits to his Facebook customers using Formula Nissan’s Federal Express account.
Interestingly, nobody else appears to be charged, suggesting he got away with it for some time without anyone noticing a lot of lift kits were coming in and then going out. It also looks like Nissan North America’s stock tracking software didn’t throw up any flags. Two hundred or so lift kits for Nissan trucks selling out of a single dealership and being ordered manually over a year sounds like a lot – particularly when Nissan only sells two suitable models – the Nissan Frontier and Nissan Titan.
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As for the dealership, McLane was obviously abusing a lot of trust. We’re guessing that by going around the software ordering system it didn’t go into the inventory lists, so it wasn’t caught when inventory was taken. Likely, it was accountancy that caught the discrepancy in money spent on parts versus revenue and profit. Any which way, it’s a blatant crime that was going to get spotted sooner or later.
News Summary:
- Nissan Scammed Out Of $575,000 By Its Own Dealer
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