FBI details Florek raid

11/23/00

After a six-month probe, federal agents allege in an affidavit the Flagstaff
auto dealership has engaged in massive fraud that could cost customers and
banks millions of dollars.

� Copyright Arizona Daily Sun 2000

First of a three-part series

By LARRY HENDRICKS

Sun Staff Reporter

Rolling back odometers.

Selling salvaged vehicles as "good, used" ones.

Forging Social Security numbers and signatures.

Falsifying auto loan applications and sales contracts.

Those are some of the allegations against the Joe Florek Volkswagen and Audi
dealership contained in an affidavit filed by the FBI to obtain search
warrants that were served in October on the Flagstaff business and other
locations associated with it.

The 59-page affidavit was unsealed by a judge this week, and it describes in
detail a six-month investigation into alleged bank fraud, mail and wire
fraud, and odometer fraud.

The affidavit was prepared by Marilyn Shefveland, a special agent with the
FBI assigned to the Bank Fraud Task Force in Phoenix, which has been
investigating the Florek dealership since March 2000.

No arrests have been made regarding the violations outlined in the
affidavit.

Marc Dallacroce, a special agent with the FBI, said the investigation is
continuing. He was unable to comment on the status of the investigation and
if any arrests were imminent.

The FBI has had help of the Flagstaff Police Department, the Coconino County
Sheriff's Office and the Metro anti-drug task force, the Arizona Attorney
General's Office, the Arizona Department of Transportation, the Arizona
Motor Vehicle Division and the State Department of Liquor Licenses and
Control.

The affidavit, an explanation of why there was probable cause to justify the
search warrants, was unsealed by U.S. Magistrate Judge Morton Sitver on
Monday.

Another search warrant was served on a second dealership, Gray Mountain Auto
Connection near Cameron on North Highway 89, also owned by co-owners Jay
Wigdore, 42, and Steve Fiorentino, 46, of the Florek dealership.

A third was served on Fender Bender, an auto body repair shop on East
Huntington Drive that the dealership operates for servicing its own vehicles
and its customers' vehicles.

A fourth was served on a storage shed at Coconino Mini Storage rented by the
business.

According to the affidavit, the probe was launched in part after the
Flagstaff Police Department reported receiving more than 40 complaints
regarding business practices at the Florek dealership and the Gray Mountain
dealership.

Joanne Bonfilio, the consumer

project investigator

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