Four members of a theft ring that stole over 100 high-end vehicles worth millions of dollars from dealerships across the United States have been sentenced in federal court.
The defendants pleaded guilty to conspiracy to transport, possess, and sell stolen vehicles in interstate commerce and were sentenced.
Dewanne Lamar White, 44, of Sumter, South Carolina, was sentenced to 108 months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release. White also pleaded guilty to possession of a stolen motor vehicle.
Kevin Ja’Coryen James Fields, 28, of Charlotte, was sentenced to 96 months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release. Fields also pleaded guilty to interstate transportation of a stolen vehicle.
Reginald Eugene Hill, 25, of Charlotte, was sentenced to 60 months in prison, followed by two years of supervised release, and Garyka Vaughn Bost, 26, of Denver, North Carolina, was sentenced to 12 months and a day in prison, followed by two years of supervised release.
According to court documents and court proceedings, from 2021 to 2023, the defendants engaged in a conspiracy to steal luxury vehicles worth millions of dollars from dealerships in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, and Arizona.
To maximise profits, they targeted luxury vehicles made by Bentley, BMW, Cadillac, Land Rover, Porsche, Mercedes-Benz, and other expensive models from Chevrolet, Dodge, Ford, and other manufacturers.
Court documents show that the defendants executed the thefts in a number of ways. In some instances, they visited dealerships posing as customers interested in purchasing the vehicles. After pretending to test drive or inspect the vehicles, the defendants would swap the vehicles’ key fobs with similar ones and later use the stolen key fobs to steal the vehicles.
Other times, they employed methods like “smash and grab” thefts, where they would break into dealerships and locate keys to the high-end models or break open lockboxes containing keys to luxury vehicles and then drive the vehicles off the lot.
According to court records, Bost, Fields, and Hill often served as drivers in the conspiracy, and White frequently paid them and other drivers for their work in the scheme. On several occasions, the defendants and other co-conspirators stole multiple vehicles simultaneously, resulting in hundreds of thousands of dollars in losses.
According to court documents and the sentencing hearings, once the stolen vehicles were taken off the dealership lots, the defendants avoided law enforcement detection by removing the GPS navigation and tracking systems from the stolen vehicles, attaching fictitious dealer tags or stolen license plates on the vehicles, and replacing the vehicles’ authentic Vehicle Identification Numbers, among other things.
The stolen vehicles were then transported back to Charlotte, where they were sold locally at prices well below market value.
