The price is right… or is it?

• Fraud

Brian Korthals/Daily Globe A fictitious address for a nonexistent car dealership in Luverne is nothing more than a bare lot. The scam has angered many people who wanted to purchase a bargain vehicle.

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LUVERNE — The Kelly Blue Book price on a 2008 Pontiac Solstice convertible in excellent condition with less than 34,000 miles is $19,435, but according to ATB Auto, they have one for $9,890.

The auto dealer has a Mini Cooper listed for several thousand dollars below book value, a 2009 Porsche Cayenne that just begs for a spin, and a plethora of Mercedes, BMWs and Vipers. All of them are priced to drive away quickly.

The only catch is that the dealership supposedly selling the cars doesn’t actually exist in the real world. The website for ATB Autos states the dealership is at 237 S. Kniss Ave. in Luverne.

“Unfortunately, there’s no such place in Luverne,” said Rock County Sheriff Evan Verbrugge.

No such address exists, and where 237 would approximately be on South Kniss Avenue is an undeveloped lot.

People from across the country have been calling the sheriff’s office after sending money for a vehicle and never hearing another word.

He hasn’t received any reports from anyone in southwest Minnesota or the surrounding area — just from people too far away to drive to Luverne to check out the vehicles they were looking at online.

“One guy sent thousands of dollars overseas, and now he’s out that cash,” Verbrugge said. “Victims are told to send money to a UK account.”

The website even has a local Luverne phone number, but a call to the number from the Daily Globe was not answered, nor was an email. Victims have said they called the number and the phone just rings, but later a call was returned to them, presumably through the use of caller ID. Victims have reported that the accent of the person returning the calls sounds foreign.

A contact tab on the website asks potential customers to enter their contact information instead of giving out the company’s facts. Another tab on the site offers directions and brings customers to a Google map, showing where the dealership is supposedly located.

There are several completely legitimate auto dealerships on South Kniss Avenue, one right nearby the fictitious address. Southgate Auto, owned by Larry Top, is at 207 S. Kniss Ave. Top has been located there for about a dozen years, he said, and he bought out the previous dealership, which was owned by Jim Velkamp for the previous 30 years or so.

“We’ve talked with Southgate Auto, and they have no idea what this ATB stuff is all about,” Verbrugge said. “They had never heard of it.”

City, county and chamber offices in Luverne have never heard of ATB Auto, and phone calls from law enforcement have not been returned.

“You’d think if they were a legitimate business, they would call law enforcement back and tell them so,” Verbrugge said.

Reportedly, some potential customers have driven to the address on the website and ended up at Southgate. One woman said she was told by the ATB person who returned her call that if she wired 25 percent of the vehicle cost to them, they would deliver the car right to her door.

The cars listed on the ATB site are not as fictitious as the dealership — they just aren’t in Luverne. Or Minnesota, for that matter.

Research on the vehicle identification numbers (VIN) shows they are scattered about the United States at real dealerships. The Pontiac Solstice was actually in Harrisburg, Pa., and has been sold. The 2008 Mini Cooper is in Salisbury, Md. at a dealership called Pohanka of Salisbury. A salesman in Salisbury verified the VIN listed on the ATB website as a car on their lot.

At a dealership in San Diego, Calif., a BMW X5, listed on the ATB website for $19,200, is priced to move at $38,995. A salesman at San Diego Auto Finders said he was staring at the car as he spoke on the phone to the Daily Globe.

“(The $19,200) price is unrealistic,” he said. “These cars new are worth $60,000. That’s a scam.”

According to Verbrugge, ATB Auto is indeed a scam. The Rock County Sheriff’s Office has turned the investigation over to the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) Fraud Department. Contact was made with the website domain owner, asking that the fraudulent site be taken down. As of Thursday morning, the direct address of the site was not working, but links from other auto sales sites still bring a user to the ATB site.

The domain registrant is listed as CarsForSale.com through GoDaddy.com, and lists an administrative contact in Beresford, S.D. A call to the phone number listed went straight to a voicemail that stated the contact’s mailbox was full and could not accept messages. A call to the CarsForSale management number listed on the site ended in a recording that stated all representatives were currently busy.

“It’s impressive,” Verbrugge said of the ATB website. “They have sweet-looking vehicles, and if you look up the prices on Kelly, these are way cheap, which they use to entice customers. It looks legit, but there are obviously issues.”

The sheriff’s office has received more calls about ATB Auto than it has ever received about a business. Verbrugge said victims that have asked for verification of a Minnesota dealer’s license have been satisfied with what the company provides.

“They’ve been able to produce something saying they are licensed,” he said.

In the long run, Verbrugge said, the old adage still stands — if a deal seems too good to be true, it probably is.

Tags: news, fraudulent, online, car, dealership, luverne