HOUSTON – Houston police are searching for a 61-year-old man who is accused of fraudulently buying more than a dozen vehicles in Houston and Pennsylvania.
Houston police said Jorge Lamarche has gone through a lot of trouble to cover his tracks. Lamarche is accused of using nine different aliases to fraudulently buy several high-end, luxury vehicles in at least two states.
“There are 15 dealerships involved, 19 vehicles, 1.3 million dollars, and five different police agencies are involved in this investigation,” said Sgt. D. Schlosser with HPD’s Auto Theft Division.
HPD is working with law enforcement in Pennsylvania where they believe Lamarche may have purchased 30 additional fraudulent vehicles.
“Once they have a system that works, they’ll take it from city to city, trying to obtain more vehicles,” Schlosser said.
About half of the vehicles Lamarche is accused of stealing from dealerships in Houston and one in San Antonio have been recovered.
“This is definitely a large-scale identity theft crime,” said Roshelle Salinas, Executive VP of the Houston Automotive Dealers Association.
HADA works closely with HPD to help them catch criminals and educate dealerships on how to train employees to spot any red flags when someone wants to buy a vehicle.
Salinas said when this kind of fraud happens, everyone from the dealerships to the finance and insurance companies is impacted.
“It does have a trickle-down effect. Thankfully, there are systems in place to not impact the consumer as much, but when any theft happens, it’s definitely impacting more than one person,” Salinas said.