Four Men Sentenced for Stealing $11.5 Million Worth of High-End Cars
The best cars come at a cost—and the official one tends to be the least onerous of the bunch.
Four men are headed to jail for their part in a North Carolina-baed theft ring that stole well over 100 high-end vehicles between 2021 and 2023, reports Road and Track. The men used various means to steal over $11 million worth of cars from dealerships across the country and then sold them back in the Tarheel State.
The four men—Dewanne White of South Carolina and Kevin Fields, Reginald Hill, and Garyka Bost of North Carolina—were sentenced in federal court late last week, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office Western District of North Carolina. Each pleaded guilty to conspiracy to transport, possess, and sell stolen vehicles in interstate commerce and was sentenced to time in prison followed by a period of supervised release. White, who also pleaded guilty to possession of a stolen motor vehicle, received the harshest penalty: 108 months in prison followed by three years of supervised release. The thieves were brought to justice thank to the work of Charlotte police and a mult-state task force.
The Department of Justice says the theft ring stole vehicles from dealerships nationwide, including in the states surrounding the Carolinas, Florida, Ohio, New York, and Arizona. No specific vehicles were named, but the men targeted those made by luxury automakers like Bentley, BMW, Land Rover, Mercedes-Benz, and Porsche, but also went after high-end models made by Chevrolet, Dodge, and Ford.
The men are said to have used a variety of methods to steal the vehicles, according to the DOJ. Sometimes, they would pose as potential customers and swap out a vehicle’s key fob with another following a test drive, then use the legitimate device to steal the car at a later time. In other instances, they would simply break into a dealership, locate keys, and drive off with the targeted vehicles right off the lot. Several times, the ring made off with multiple cars at once.
Once a vehicle had been stolen from a dealership, any GPS navigation or tracking systems would be removed and it would be transported out of state. Once in North Carolina, the vehicle would be sold locally for a price far below market value. Local outlets report that 132 vehicles valued at $11.5 million were recovered by authorities during the investigation.
