A Los Angeles man has plead guilty to coming luxury car owners into giving him the keys to their cars. 41-year-old Geoffrey Eldridge Hull plead guilty to one count of wire fraud for his marketing company aimed at scamming unknowing car owners looking for someone to take on the lease of their luxury vehicle, KTLA reported.
Hull has been accused of running the scheme from April 2016 to November 2019. He would claim to have clients interested in taking luxury car leases for high-end vehicles such as Bentleys, Ferraris, and Maseratis. However, his company never produced the results that they promised.
Using a friend and colleague, Hull promised the luxury leaseholders that he would get buyers with good credit to legally take on the vehicles, and in the meantime he would make the monthly lease payments.
However, in the end, Hull was only offering the luxury cars for rent and giving little to no money to the original leaseholders, who were still responsible for lease payments. When customers began complaining and asking for their cars back, Hull would ignore them.
The victims went to police reports to obtain their property back, a lot times finding the luxury cars were either damaged, incurred toll and parking violations, or driven over the allotted mileage. After a series of customers reported the business, Hull, who has three prior convictions for grand theft auto, was charged.
“I don’t know what kind of person you are and how you take advantage of people like this, but it’s not right. And you know it’s not right,” one victim told Hull in a text message.
Court documents say Hull used different company names to operate his scheme, including Exotic Lease Transfer, Luxe Lease Transfer, Shift Lease, Veer Lease, Torque Transfer, Haven Transfer, Early Lease, and Open Lease Transfer.
Hull also used a series of aliases as part of the scheme, including “Geoff Eldredge,” “Geoff Eldridge,” “Jefrii Eldridge,” “Geoffrey Hulle,” “Jeff Bluthenthal,” and “Jeff H.”
The California DOJ reports that Hull is accused of defrauding at least 128 individuals and incurring losses of at least $1,560,321. He’s scheduled to be sentenced on May 26 and will face a statutory maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison.
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