State investigators raid car dealership after 10+ customer complaints

COBB COUNTY, Ga. — Channel 2 Action News was there Friday when state investigators raided a Cobb County car dealership.

We started investigating the ATL Car Depot on Cobb Parkway in Kennesaw after more than a dozen customers complained about not being able to get titles for their vehicles.

State and local investigators stayed for hours, looking for evidence of shady dealing that left customers with temp tags soon to expire, and no proper paperwork to get registered.

Drivers whose temp tags are about to expire got bad news from investigators. If the paperwork is screwed up on your new car, the local tax commissioner can give you another 30-day temp. Then that’s it: The car’s illegal without a permanent tag.

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Investigators said the dealership put spaces or misspellings on customer names and resubmitted their deals to trick the system into issuing more tags.

“Without your information, we may have never known about this case,” said Assistant Chief of Revenue Investigations Jeff Mitchell.

If the state finds the dealership kept the tax money it collected, it’s considered theft.

“It’s just like anything, it’s theft. If it’s remitted to them to be paid to the state, we look at that as theft,” Mitchell said.

Channel 2 Consumer Investigator Jim Strickland got no response when he left a message for C.J. Nayee, one of the owners.

There are no arrests and no criminal warrants at this time. Sorting through records will take into next week.

Cox Media Group