You’re saying the same thing over and over again and not really contributing to the discussion anymore. Relax. Quality over quantity.
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It is a sales person running this fraud, not a dealer principle. And this is different than just asking, it is actually implementing it on a large scale. And it was not a legal channel to acquire codes since there is no such thing. I would assume the Feds are involved because some of the codes could be from out of state dealers and sales as well.
Next you’re going to tell me that what’s written on the lease contract doesn’t actually matter.
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The dealer had to be involved. No Sales Manager out there can pretend to not know this guy’s scheme.
That FCA dealership is going down.
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Am I off base in thinking that the dealership higher ups either knew about this and did nothing or even encouraged this kind of thing? I find it hard to believe that they had no idea what was going on when a guy sold 250 cars in a month.
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I guess the Feds found Nimo lol
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Nothing to see here, just a guy trying to make it in America.
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I agree. There is no way this went unnoticed. The office couldn’t possibly keep entering employee discount codes and not wonder how their dealership is selling to such a high percentage of “relatives.”
Shredding machines are working overtime right now over there!
I know of people who sell over 50 a month that have their own personal team, so it could be easy to instruct his own team to continue on without upper management knowing. The investigation interviewed about 270 employees from 16-18 and if he sells 200 a month, that is almost 7000 cars over 3 years. 270 is a drop in the bucket even if he did half as many units. Now obviously we don’t have all the info, so it is all just speculation, but the article claims that only the sales person is being charges, not the dealer itself.
FCA only started to care when the shortages hit, but were fine with it when he sold volumes of their cars.
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That’s not a good look if it becomes another Wells Fargo.
Wells Fargo Defrauded the consumer and saddled them with extra fees. This is only affecting FCA and their bottom line.
Yeah, opening account without customer knowing is pretty egregious.
20 years?!
Damn…don’t mess with the US Car Manufacturers
That’s fluff , AFAIK no one gets the max unless you have doing something really bad.
Michigan car salesman accused of fake employee pricing costing FCA $8.7 million | Autoblog
Federal authorities have charged a 34-year old salesman named Apollon Nimo with wire fraud, saying he masterminded an employee pricing scheme that reportedly cost Fiat-Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) around $8.7 million. He operated undetected for several years, authorities said, giving thousands of new-car buyers unbeatable deals while receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars in bonuses.
Nimo began giving employee discounts on purchases and loans in 2014, court documents say, but it’s a little puzzling that such a scheme wasn’t uncovered until 2021. He closed more sales with employee discounts than any other FCA salesperson in the United States, according to Automotive News. Prosecutors believe his customers received a 5% discount by falsely claiming they were the brother- or sister-in-law of an FCA employee. They added that Employee Purchase Control Numbers (EPCN) were often bought and sold on private Facebook groups.
For example, court documents assert that Nimo’s father, Salim, leased at least three different cars in 2014 through his son, who worked at Parkway Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep-Ram in Clinton Township, Michigan. He received a discount on each vehicle by claiming he was the brother-in-law of three different FCA employees. FCA seemingly trusted its dealers and their personnel to do the right thing, and it did not verify whether the family connection was true.
The scheme was a win-win, prosecutors say: Buyers received a cheaper car, and Nimo unlocked big bonuses for being a top seller. FCA awarded him about $700,000 between 2010 and 2019. He sold around 250 cars in January 2020, which Automotive News notes is more than the entire sales staff at the average FCA store.
Surprisingly, it’s not the super-sized bonuses or the jaw-dropping sales figures that rang an alarm bell. Law enforcement officials turned their attention to Nimo after FCA employees noticed someone was applying their personal discount code to purchases without their authorization. Following the paper trail led them to Nimo’s store.
Federal agents arrested Nimo on April 30. He posted a bond, and a preliminary hearing is set for May 21.
I don’t know if @Benedetto is active these days but I would love to know what the buzz is over in Michigan.
Active enough to beat you to posting this 
#merged
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