Charlotte car dealership owner and sales manager plead guilty to money laundering conspiracy

Date: Aug. 16, 2024

Contact:[email protected]

Charlotte, NC - The owner of a Charlotte area car dealership and a sales manager have pleaded guilty to money laundering conspiracy charges, announced Dena J. King, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of North Carolina. John Harvey Martin of Charlotte pleaded guilty today, and Vincent Emmanuel Jefferson, Jr. of Fort Mill, South Carolina, pleaded guilty on Tuesday, August 13, 2024.

Donald "Trey" Eakins, Special Agent in Charge of the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation (IRS CI), Charlotte Field Office, and Robert J. Murphy, Special Agent in Charge of the Atlanta Field Division of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), which oversees the Charlotte District Office, join U.S. Attorney King in making today's announcement.

According to filed court documents and court proceedings, Martin was the owner of iNetwork Auto Group Inc. (iNetwork), a car dealership located in Charlotte. Martin owned and operated The Scorpio nightclub, also located in Charlotte. Martin employed Jefferson as a sales manager for iNetwork. Court documents show that, from July 2017, through January 2021, Martin and Jefferson engaged in a money laundering scheme by selling approximately 20 luxury vehicles to G.D., an individual who the defendants knew was a drug dealer or of whom they were willfully blind to that fact. The defendants received cash payments from G.D., also knowing or being willfully blind to the fact that the cash represented property derived from some form of criminal activity. Jefferson and Martin further facilitated the fraud by allowing G.D. to buy the vehicles using the names of straw purchasers in order to conceal G.D.'s identity and hide the illicit source of the cash G.D. was using to pay for the vehicles. To further the conspiracy, Martin and Jefferson at times forged the signatures of straw purchasers on sales, registration, and title paperwork for the vehicles sold to G.D., and frequently notarized the paperwork knowing that the straw purchasers were not the true purchasers of the vehicles. Court records show that Martin and Jefferson received from G.D. cash payments for the vehicles totaling over $520,000.

According to court documents, Martin used at least $200,000 in cash that he received from G.D. to pay for renovations to a building adjacent to iNetwork. Martin also solicited and received at least $100,000 in cash from G.D. to buy The Scorpio nightclub, while concealing G.D.'s ownership interest in The Scorpio. As Martin admitted in court today, he subsequently bought out G.D.'s ownership interest in The Scorpio for at least $100,000 in cash. G.D. gave that money to another individual, identified in court documents as J.M., who then attempted to drive the money to G.D.'s drug trafficking source of supply in California. After law enforcement seized the money from J.M., J.M. - at G.D.'s direction - submitted a fraudulent claim to the United States government under penalty of perjury falsely representing that J.M. was the lawful owner of the money and that he legally obtained the money from the sale of The Scorpio. Court documents show that Martin provided fraudulent documentation and made false representations in support of J.M.'s false and fraudulent claim.

Martin and Jefferson have been released on bond. The money laundering conspiracy charge carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. A sentencing date has not been set.

The prosecution was the result of a joint investigation by IRS CI and the DEA.

Assistant U.S. Attorneys Taylor Stout and Thomas Kent of the U.S. Attorney's Office in Charlotte are prosecuting the case.

CI is the criminal investigative arm of the IRS, responsible for conducting financial crime investigations, including tax fraud, narcotics trafficking, money-laundering, public corruption, healthcare fraud, identity theft and more. CI special agents are the only federal law enforcement agents with investigative jurisdiction over violations of the Internal Revenue Code, obtaining a more than a 90 percent federal conviction rate. The agency has 20 field offices located across the U.S. and 12 attaché posts abroad.