MERCED, Calif. - The owners of a local car dealership and a manager were arrested by agents from the FBI and U.S. Immigration Wednesday and charged with a phony application that allowed unqualified customers by cars financed through Valley First CU.
Agents arrested Abdel "Fred" Baset Jawad, Abdul "Manny" Muniem Mohamad Jawad, Najeh "Alex" Kamal Jawad, who are owners of The Auto Store of Merced, and Armando Fathic Abdallah, a manager at the dealership. The four were indicated by a federal grand jury in connection with a scheme to prepare false loan applications to unqualified borrowers. The suspects are naturalized U.S. citizens, according to authorities.
The suspects allegedly entered fictitious information on loan applications, including the names of employers for whom the customers didn't work. The men also inflated the earning amounts of customers, in addition to creating fictitious earnings statements to reflect payments of wages by businesses that never employed the customers, according to a federal indictment handed up Wednesday.
The $325 million credit union financed about 60 auto sales and has lost about $540,000 from the scheme because many of the borrowers have defaulted on the vehicles.
