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 supplier 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. Nonetheless, the French automotive supplier had vanished.
Mente, the founder and CEO of on-line style retailer Revolve, bought in touch with Colorado legal professional Scott Oliver to facilitate the acquisition. Oliver represented the supplier by the title of Jean-Pierre M.R. Clement, the Denver Put up reported. Nonetheless, this man with the absurdly stereotypical French title 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 folks and get them to pay cash and defraud folks out of some huge cash.”
Rogers claims to have been an oil trade mission supervisor who turned a billionaire by investing early in Snapchat and beginning a non-public fairness agency. His authorized historical past tells a a lot totally different story. He’s presently 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 response to a 2023 lawsuit. Oliver facilitated the fraudulent deal as effectively however is simply named as a defendant within the Mente case. The lawyer claims he had no data 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 dropped at the USA by championship-winning NASCAR group proprietor Rick Hendrick in 2024, in response to Automobile and Driver. The hypercars are crammed to the brim with know-how from the Mercedes-AMG F1 Staff, and solely 275 of them have 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 discovered 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 businesses creating smartphone cost apps, fraud schemes cropped up utilizing faux QR codes to attach drivers to phishing websites to steal your monetary data. For individuals who don’t love paying for parking, there are additionally faux parking tickets that scammers use to do the identical factor.