Car dealership owner denies laundering money

Richard Arledge of McKinney said a series of inconsistencies and misunderstandings led to his federal indictment.

By Danny Gallagher, McKinney Courier-Gazette

Richard Arledge, owner of Richard Arledge Automotive, former owner of Richard Arledge Suzuki and resident of McKinney, sharply denies the accusations of money laundering that the U.S. Attorney's Office have levied against him.

"I am not a criminal," Arledge said from his dealership office in Richardson. "I sold cars. That’s what I do is sell, finance and lease cars. That's all I did."

A federal grand jury indicted Arledge, 54, last week in the U.S. District Court of Eastern Texas along with 15 other defendants on a count of conspiracy to launder monetary instruments through his car dealership, according to federal court records.

The indictment said Arledge conspired with his fellow employees to conceal the identity of his customers' money by selling them luxury vehicles and failing to report these purchases to the Internet Revenue Service. Some of the customers listed as defendants in the indictment sought to hide money they obtained through drug deals, prostitution and fraudulent schemes.

Arledge said he only attempted to provide his customers, some of whom have less than stellar credit and need special financing to buy a car, with vehicles.

"The original theory was that these people paid cash for the cars and that I put a fake lien on the car and I've been in cahoots with them," he said. "If a car got seized, I would go get the car from the police being that I'm a bona fide lien holder. I've been in this exact same business since 1995 leasing cars to people with bad credit, financing people that don't have the credit to get financing."

The first domino that led to his fall, Arledge said, fell back July of 2007 when he sold a black Corvette to a Clarisa Jones with money from Robert Louis Hawkins. Hawkins is listed as one of the defendants in his conspiracy indictment. Arledge leased the vehicle in Jones' name and Desoto Police seized the car two weeks later. Police asked to look at his records regarding the car twice since the arrest and Arledge said he provided full cooperation.

He sold several other cars to other customers including some listed in the indictment in the subsequent months. The last customer was to an undercover IRS agent who gave him a false name and address before police raided on his office on Apr. 15, 2008 with a search warrant.

"I was shocked when they walked in the door," he said. "They had about 50 to 75 officers with guns drawn for a search warrant for my dealership. I had already been cooperating with the IRS on some other customers of mine. I was opening everything I had up to them. I asked them if I was a target and they said no, so I still cooperated."

The U.S. Attorney's Office said Arledge aimed to conceal the source of the money by failing to file key paperwork to eliminate any paper trail between the money and the buyer. Arledge said he has filed documents in his records that only prove he was late with the paperwork.

"I find it interesting that the IRS fined me $50 for late filings," he said. "That's the one thing I'm guilty of."

For every transaction in which he receives over $10,000 in cash for a car, Arledge said he has to file an 8300 or CTR form with the IRS within 15 days of the purchase. He said he has records to back up his claims that he filed the paperwork and refused to falsify or withdraw records from his customers' purchases, including the transaction with the undercover agent.

He also said some of the details don't match his financial records and business practices. The search warrant affidavit describes the 8300 file on the undercover agent's purchase as typed out or produced by a computer, but the records he produced are hand-written.

He denied that he attempted to hide his payments in his account, noting that his records show he deposited all of the money in his two business bank accounts on the same day of the purchase.

"If I'm in the money laundering business, I'm not making any money at it by putting all of the money in the bank," he said. "I'm one dumb son of a [expletive deleted]."

The attempts to hide the value of the payments were also not done in malice. He said it is "normal business" for car dealerships to accept part of a down payment and collect the rest at a later date and still report the entire transaction to the IRS. It's also a normal request to put the car in another person's name if the customer is buying the vehicle for someone else such as a spouse, child or boy or girlfriend.

"That's not trying to hide him by trying to put the car in [their] name," Arledge said. "I've done 4,000 deals and I've done less than 10 like the way we're talking about and half of those were ones that were indicted."

The case and indictment against him have taken a huge strain on his business and his finances. Arledge said he risks losing his home and his property because of the rising cost of attorney's fees. He said he has lost nearly $2.4 million in funds for his dealership and only has around $4,000 to his name.

"I can't prove to you that someone has said something about me," he said. "I can only deny it and I totally deny it."

Attempts were made to address Arledge's concerns to the U.S. Attorney's Office through their spokeswoman Davilyn Walston, but Waltson said their attorneys cannot discuss cases that are still under investigation.

Contact Danny Gallagher at dgallgher@acnpapers.com.

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