A Columbus man who owned a car dealership in Whitehall has been indicted by a federal grand jury for altering the odometers on vehicles he sold, the U.S Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Ohio announced.
Simon Nwaru, 38, was indicted on April 24 on eight counts of odometer fraud, according to a news release.
Nwaru, owner of S. Automotive Ltd. on 4333 E. Main St. in Whitehall — which is now listed as permanently closed on Google — “knowingly disconnected, reset, and altered” the registered mileage on vehicles that he sold between November 2020 and May 2022, federal prosecutors say.
Nwaru intentionally reduced the mileage on some vehicles by approximately 80,000 miles to 100,000 miles, prosecutors say.
Odometer fraud is a federal crime punishable by up to three years in prison, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
Reviews of Nwaru and S. Automotive Ltd. on Google gave the dealership a 1.5 out of 5 stars, with many of the complaints involving titles not delivered to customers, accusations of mileage tampering, and customers being told their vehicles had clean titles when they were actually salvage vehicle titles.
Robenus Tolesa, one of those who gave a review, said in a post three years ago: “Don’t recommend unless you run CarFax on every vehicle … Can’t believe they really tried to sell us a Tundra with 279k Miles as a 120k miles. I don’t know how (or) what they used to run the miles back but CarFax showed last sold was December of 2021 had 279k miles. I showed to the guy (and) he said sorry about that.”
Two other central Ohio car dealerships were sued by Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost’s office in January for altering odometer readings. The two dealerships are accused of rolling back the odometers on vehicles they sold and failing to turn over titles to dozens of customers who purchased vehicles, The Dispatch previously reported.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that there are more than 450,000 vehicles sold each year that have false odometer readings. According to the NHTSA, the crime costs consumers more than $1 billion annually.
Reporter Shahid Meighan can be reached at smeighan@dispatch.com, at ShahidMeighan on X, and at shahidthereporter.dispatch.com on Bluesky.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Ex-Whitehall car dealership owner accused of altering odometers