Federal prosecutors just indicted a man on charges of mail and wire fraud, stemming from his involvement in a non-delivery sales scheme. According to the Department of Justice (DOJ), he conducted sales transactions across 36 states, involving approximately 120 individuals, but frequently failed to deliver the promised vehicles. In most cases, his alleged victims were those in need of specialty accessibility vehicles. Now, he’s facing up to 170 years in prison.
The accused man in question is Edward Scott Rock and the U.S. Department of Justice says that he ran this scheme out of his Philadelphia used car dealership between 2019 and 2023. During that time, he would reportedly purchase vehicles at auction and subsequently list them for resale online. However, after sealing the deal and receiving payment from the buyer, he allegedly failed to deliver the vehicles as promised. In a particularly egregious instance, Federal prosecutors claim that he sold the same 2017 Ford van to 13 different customers.
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Apparently, it was one of the rare instances where he did eventually deliver the vehicle, but even then, there was an issue with the title. In another case, the co-founder of Boho Camper Vans, a van-life proponent, David Sodermann bought two different vans from Rock and wired him $25,000 as payment. Months later the vans still hadn’t shown up and Sodermann asked for his money back.
“It was a big mess for a long time,” Sodemann told the Associated Press. “He always had some excuse. He would take pictures of him sending the money back FedEx, but it never got dropped in the mail. It was all just a big show.”
The same report states that Rock eventually refunded the money, but this process took nearly two years and required legal intervention. Buyers who didn’t have the same resources as Sodermann likely faced greater difficulties in recovering their funds.
According to the Justice Department, roughly two-thirds of Rock’s victims were either “persons with a physical or mobility disability, persons over the age of 65, or businesses which provided transportation services to those populations.” Rock now faces up to 170 years in prison, five years of supervised release, a $2,750,000 fine, and restitution and forfeiture.