MIAMI – Authorities arrested nearly two dozen suspects, including three from South Florida, after a five-year racketeering investigation centering around the sale of high-end vehicles, according to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, which announced the bust Monday.
FDLE said the cars targeted – including Porsches, Land Rovers and Maseratis – were obtained through fraud or theft.
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Investigators held a news conference Monday in Tampa about the case, dubbed “Operation Gone in 60 Days,” and said one of the suspects worked at a Miami-based dealership.
Mariangel Lizardo-Peraza, 29, of Miami Gardens, and Miami residents Jorge Manuel Gonzalez-Aris, 33, and Roberto Marrero-Cisnero, 66, were among those charged, according to the FDLE.
Lizardo-Peraza and Marrero-Cisnero faced racketeering charges, while Gonzalez-Aris was charged with grand theft of a motor vehicle, possession of certificate title with the intent to defraud and driving while suspended.
The 20 others arrested mostly reside in the Tampa area and face a range of charges.
“Investigators discovered a criminal organization that was issuing fraudulent Vehicle Identification Numbers (VINs) to high-end vehicles that were obtained through fraud or theft, selling the vehicles below market value, fraudulently assigning tags, defrauding customers through purporting to issue automobile insurance, and other crimes,” according to an FDLE news release.
According to the FDLE, the investigation began in 2018 after authorities began looking into illegally-issued commercial driver’s licenses.
“Suspects would illegally acquire the vehicles by using couriers, fake names and fraudulent payments to ‘purchase’ the vehicles from dealerships who wouldn’t discover the fraud until after the vehicles were gone from the lot,” the news release states. “Another vehicle-acquisition scheme saw the suspects keeping rental vehicles and filing false police reports claiming the vehicles had been stolen.”
Authorities said the group’s ringleader would then generate counterfeit VINs to accompany the vehicles to further cover up the thefts.
“Since the vehicles were obtained illegally and lacked legitimate paperwork that could be used to register them, another suspect, who worked in a Miami-based dealership, issued temporary tags from the dealership or transferred a tag from a legitimate vehicle to the fraudulent vehicle,” according to FDLE.
FDLE officials did not identify the dealership in question as of Monday afternoon, or which suspect worked there.
Authorities said that members of the ring “would also purport to sell auto insurance to customers purchasing the stolen vehicles, which would often result in customers receiving an initial policy that quickly lapsed as the suspects kept the actual payments provided.”
In addition to the 23 suspects already arrested, four more were at large with either active arrest warrants or arrest affidavits filed, according to the FDLE.