Some rich automotive fanatics cannot resist the attract of proudly owning a uncommon hypercar. Michael Mente, a Los Angeles billionaire, handed over $5.4 million to a French automotive seller for a Mercedes-AMG One in 2021. A federal lawsuit filed in February alleges Mente purchased a construct slot from the producer and later selected his customized choices for the F1-inspired hypercar. Nevertheless, the French automotive seller had vanished.
Mente, the founder and CEO of on-line vogue retailer Revolve, acquired in touch with Colorado legal professional Scott Oliver to facilitate the acquisition. Oliver represented the seller by the identify of Jean-Pierre M.R. Clement, the Denver Put up reported. Nevertheless, this man with the absurdly stereotypical French identify wasn’t actual. The Division of Homeland Safety knowledgeable Mente in June 2022 that the company believed Clement was really Texas con man Traveon Rogers. By this level, the Mercedes-AMG One has already bought out and manufacturing hadn’t even began but. Oliver mentioned, “Rogers was fairly a personality. Clearly he was capable of persuade individuals and get them to pay cash and defraud individuals out of some huge cash.”
Rogers claims to have been an oil business undertaking supervisor who turned a billionaire by investing early in Snapchat and beginning a personal fairness agency. His authorized historical past tells a a lot totally different story. He’s at present serving a seven-year jail sentence for felony theft in an identical scheme through which he impersonated Aston Martin representatives and solid paperwork.
The AMG One is an interesting piece of bait
This is not even the primary time Rogers has tried his Mercedes-AMG One scheme. He allegedly stole $3.19 million from one other unsuspecting purchaser, in line with a 2023 lawsuit. Oliver facilitated the fraudulent deal as nicely however is just named as a defendant within the Mente case. The lawyer claims he had no information of the deception.
It is simple to see why the Mercedes-AMG One was such an interesting piece of bait. The primary AMG One was delivered to america by championship-winning NASCAR crew proprietor Rick Hendrick in 2024, in line with Automotive and Driver. The hypercars are stuffed to the brim with expertise from the Mercedes-AMG F1 Staff, and solely 275 of them had been ever constructed. The 1,049-horsepower machine has efficiency that matches its exclusivity as the primary manufacturing automotive to finish a sub-6:30 lap of the Nürburgring.
The one lesson that may be realized from scams is at all times to do your due diligence earlier than making an costly buy. You do not have to be a billionaire to be the goal of fraudsters. With the proliferation of public parking companies creating smartphone cost apps, fraud schemes cropped up utilizing pretend QR codes to attach drivers to phishing websites to steal your monetary info. For many who do not like paying for parking, there are additionally pretend parking tickets that scammers use to do the identical factor.
