Dealer Is Accused of Rolls-Royce Fraud

A Costa Mesa car dealer was arraigned Thursday on felony charges that he bilked 15 owners of Rolls-Royces and two banks out of more than $1.5 million.

Garry Concannon, 39, was charged with 15 felony counts, including grand theft and altering motor vehicle titles. He was unable to post $500,000 bail and was returned to Orange County Jail.

Neither Concannon nor his lawyer, Michael Kenney of Santa Ana, could be reached for comment.

“This looks like the largest case of automobile fraud in Orange County history,” said Robert Duval, a senior special investigator for the California Department of Motor Vehicles. “We started getting complaints in March, and it just got bigger and bigger until we had received about 50.”

The car owners complained to police that Concannon had sold their cars on consignment without reimbursing them or that he used the cars as collateral to obtain loans, said Costa Mesa Police Sgt. Rob Smith. Only the 15 strongest cases were submitted for prosecution, he said.

Concannon obtained loans of more than $400,000 from Wells Fargo and American Interstate banks, using titles as security, said Theodore A. Johnson, a deputy Orange County district attorney prosecuting the case. He then forged applications for duplicate titles and sold the cars without telling the bank or the owners, according to the criminal complaint.

From his stylish Red Hill Avenue office, Concannon offered to refurbish and sell the English cars on consignment at a premium, the complaint alleges.

But he began having financial problems about three years ago when several business deals went sour, the criminal complaint states. He started peddling cars without telling the owners and took out loans on others that he didn’t own, the complaint states.

“He (persuaded) people to sign over the pink (title) slips,” Johnson said. “When you sign off on one of those, you are very vulnerable to the seller.”

Johnson said that in one case, Concannon promised a Newport Beach man up to $160,000 for his 1988 Rolls-Royce Corniche convertible. Concannon then sold it to a Walnut Creek auto dealer for $140,000, but never turned over the proceeds to the original owner, he said.

“Mr. Concannon is claiming this was just poor business management, that he had no criminal intent, but I find that hard to believe,” the prosecutor said. “The false applications to the DMV (for duplicate titles) show criminal intent.”

Concannon filed a bankruptcy petition in March and told creditors that he would pay them back after the business was liquidated. But bankruptcy documents show more than $2.5 million in debt and few assets. The court will sell four cars that still belong to Concannon later this summer, Duval said.

A preliminary hearing on the case was set for Aug. 8.