CHARLOTTE, NC (WBTV) – The owner of a Charlotte car dealership and a sales manager have pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of North Carolina announced that John Martin, 50, of Charlotte, pleaded guilty on Friday and Vincent Jefferson Jr., 47, of Fort Mill, South Carolina, pleaded guilty on Tuesday, August 13, 2024.
According to court documents and litigation filings, Martin owned iNetwork Auto Group Inc. (iNetwork), a Charlotte-based auto dealership.
Martin owned and operated The Scorpio nightclub, also in Charlotte. Martin employed Jefferson as a sales manager for iNetwork. Court documents show that from July 2017 to January 2021, Martin and Jefferson engaged in a money laundering scheme by selling approximately 20 luxury cars to GD, an individual the defendants knew or intentionally turned a blind eye to was a drug dealer. The defendants received cash payments from GD despite knowing or intentionally failing to realize that the cash represented property derived from some form of criminal activity. Jefferson and Martin further facilitated the fraud by allowing GD to purchase the vehicles under the names of sham purchasers in order to disguise GD’s identity and conceal the illicit source of the cash GD used to pay for the vehicles.
To further the conspiracy, Martin and Jefferson sometimes forged the signatures of sham buyers on sales, registration and title papers for the vehicles sold to GD, and often notarized the papers, even though they knew the sham buyers were not the true purchasers of the vehicles. Court records show that Martin and Jefferson received cash payments from GD for the vehicles totaling over $520,000.
According to court documents, Martin used at least $200,000 in cash he received from GD to renovate a building next to iNetwork. Martin also asked GD for and received at least $100,000 in cash to purchase The Scorpio nightclub, concealing GD’s ownership interest in the Scorpio.
As Martin admitted in court on Friday, he subsequently bought out GD’s ownership interest in The Scorpio for at least $100,000 in cash. GD gave the money to another individual, identified in court documents as JM, who then attempted to take the money to GD’s drug trafficking source in California. After law enforcement seized the money from JM, JM – at GD’s direction – filed a fraudulent claim with the U.S. government, falsely claiming under oath that JM was the rightful owner of the money and that he had legitimately obtained the money through the sale of The Scorpio. Court documents show that Martin submitted falsified documentation and made false statements to support JM’s false and fraudulent claim.
Martin and Jefferson were released on bail. The charge of conspiracy to commit money laundering carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.
A date for the verdict has not yet been set.
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