UPDATED ON 5/20/2021 - SEE QUOTE IN 5/20/2021 ARTICLE:
stating her regret for not going to the authorities right away. Johnston said she was intimidated and eventually bullied into committing these crimes
More ex-RDAG employees set for sentencing this week in federal court
Gabriel MonteLubbock Avalanche-Journal
Six former Reagor Dykes Auto Group employees were sentenced Tuesday to federal prison for their roles in a massive fraud scheme aimed at cheating the company's creditors out of millions of dollars.
Pepper Laray Rickman, Brad Fansler, Wesley Neel, Sherri Wood, Diana Urias and Sheila Miller, appeared with their attorneys before U.S. District Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk in Amarillo for back-to-back sentencing hearings that began about 9 a.m. and ended about 6 p.m. Two more former employees are due in court for sentencing Thursday. All six defendants sentenced on Tuesday entered guilty pleas months before the sentencing hearing. Miller and Urias pleaded guilty to a count of conspiracy to commit bank fraud and the other four pleaded guilty to counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
Rickman, who was an accounting controller at Reagor Dykes’ Toyota store in Plainview, was sentenced to 40 months in prison. Fansler, an RDAG group administrative director, was handed a 42-months prison sentence. Wood, who was an office manager at Reagor Dykes’ Ford store in Plainview, and Neel, who worked as the auto group's safety and compliance manager, were sentenced to 30 months in prison.
Miller, an RDAG group controller, was sentenced to 27 months in prison. Urias, an office manager in Reagor Dykes’ used car mall in Levelland, was sentenced to 24 months in prison.
All six were allowed to report to the Bureau of Prisons on June 18, 2021. to begin serving their sentences. They are also ordered to pay restitution totaling $40,254,297.72.
The six-former employees were among 16 people from the dealership, including owner Bart Reagor and CFO Shame Smith, to be charged with fraud.
Two more former RDAG employees, Alania Cabral and Whitney Maldonado, are set to be sentenced Thursday for their roles in the fraud.
Shane Andrew Smith, Reagor Dykes’ CFO, pleaded guilty in June 2019 to conspiracy to commit wire fraud. He is set to be sentenced in late July.
The charges stem from a federal investigation into a $50 million scheme, which involved defrauding the auto group’s main lender, Ford Motor Credit Company, and concealing the fraud by cross-depositing checks across several banks, a ploy known as check-kiting.
Smith also admitted to organizing a scheme known as “dummy flooring” that involved deceiving the creditor into lending money to the dealership to re-buy vehicles by applying for loans using Vehicle Identification Numbers of cars that were already sold. The borrowed money was then used to cover other expenses, according to court documents.
The investigation came after RDAG filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2018 after Ford Motor Credit sued the dealership alleging a fraud.
Meanwhile, Reagor Dykes Auto Group owner, Bart Reagor, was indicted on April 22 on two counts of bank fraud and one count of making false statements to a bank insured by the FDIC. He faces up to 90 years in prison if he is found guilty.
In that case, Reagor is accused of diverting more than $1.7 million in business loans to his personal bank account, according to court documents.
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