‘Franken-car’ scammer spared criminal record for fraud charges
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 13/08/2017 (2419 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
The public should have no trouble accepting that a young man who illegally imported and sold damaged used cars should be spared a criminal record, a Manitoba judge ruled Monday.
Provincial court Judge John Combs granted a discharge for 23-year-old Adam Sierhuis, who previously pleaded guilty to fraud under $5,000 for deceiving border officials and car buyers in his auto-selling business five years ago. His father, retired Winnipeg Police Service sergeant Richard Sierhuis, also faced fraud charges, but all charges against him were dropped when the younger Sierhuis pleaded guilty in May. Richard Sierhuis had worked for the WPS for 24 years before the charges against him were laid in 2013.
Judge Combs and Crown attorney Rich Lonstrup were brought in from Brandon to handle Adam Sierhuis’s sentencing in Winnipeg Monday. While the Crown sought six months of house arrest, the judge agreed with defence lawyer Richard Wolson that Sierhuis should get a discharge, leaving him without a criminal record and sparing him from any jail time or fine. He will have to complete 75 hours of community service work.
Considering the case as a whole, “the public would believe that a discharge would be a reasonable result in these circumstances,” Combs said.
“I do believe that a criminal record in this case might impact the future of the accused within his company, and that’s a factor to be considered,” he added. Sierhuis now works for CP Rail in Ontario and would need to travel across the U.S. border for work, court heard.
Starting when he was 17, he ran his own used-car sales business that involved buying badly damaged vehicles for cheap at auctions in the United States, fixing them up and selling them for profit. He was the sole proprietor of Locke-Auto-Marine, which he managed online with his own money, Crown attorney Lonstrup said. Sierhuis had rented out a garage in Phoenix, Arizona, and paid people to repair the vehicles before they could be brought across the border for sale in Manitoba.
“There’s nothing inherently illegal about that practice,” Lonstrup told court. But Sierhuis “bit off more than he could chew,” and the cost of the car repairs cut into his profits, leaving the garage space in Arizona close to shuttering over unpaid rent. When he was 18, between March and November 2012, he sold three vehicles that should never have been declared safe for Canadian roads. They may have been driveable, but they were not “roadworthy.”
“They couldn’t possibly have passed a legitimate safety inspection,” Lonstrup said.
With sections of the import documents blacked out to hide the truth from border officials, Sierhuis falsely declared that the vehicles had clean titles even though they had been seriously damaged and in some cases were never meant to be registered for sale again.
One of them, referred to as a “Franken-car,” was a 2006 Volvo that had severe electrical damage because of flooding, combined with part of a 2010 model that had also been in a major accident. The 2010 vehicle identification number details had been welded into the car to misrepresent its age, and it was advertised to prospective buyers as being accident-free. It was sold to a Winnipeg couple for more than $17,000.
Two other vehicles sold during the same time period were from Florida — a Volvo that Sierhuis’s company ultimately sold for more than $20,000 and a Mercedes that sold for more than $25,000. One had a certificate of destruction, and the other was a total loss. They were brought across the border as salvaged vehicles with partially redacted documents, at least one of which had been covered up with black marker to hide details from border officials.
While the younger Sierhuis was responsible for bringing the vehicles across the border, they were sold by his father, defence lawyer Wolson said Monday. Each of the three vehicles managed to pass an inspection before being sold, but the extensive damage was uncovered later by the buyers, who all got their money back in full, court heard.
Judge Combs questioned the defence about Richard Sierhuis’s possible influence over his son’s business, referring to a psychologist’s report in which Adam Sierhuis said he felt he was left holding the bag.
“There is no question that Mr. Sierhuis Senior was an active participant in this transaction,” Wolson told the judge, saying Richard Sierhuis interacted with the buyers of the vehicles his son imported — one of whom was a Winnipeg defence lawyer.
“He did it in concert with his dad, but he takes responsibility for what he’s done,” Wolson said of Adam Sierhuis.
The Crown had no proof of Richard Sierhuis’s involvement after going through email chains between father and son, Lonstrup said, and the charges against him were ultimately dropped.
“I saw no indications in the emails that the father ever counselled or even passively permitted any suggestions of illegal conduct,” he told court.
There are still unanswered questions about the case. Police couldn’t figure out how the vehicles passed inspections at private businesses before they were sold, Lonstrup told court.
“The investigation did not reveal exactly how the inspector was motivated to declare these to be roadworthy vehicles,” he said.
katie.may@freepress.mb.ca
Twitter: @thatkatiemay
Katie May
Reporter
Katie May is a general-assignment reporter for the Free Press.
History
Updated on Monday, August 14, 2017 6:42 PM CDT: Changes headline