TAMPA, Fla. – A 27-year-old Tampa man is headed to federal prison after using his position as a car dealer to orchestrate a sophisticated wire fraud scheme involving phantom vehicles and high-end exports. U.S. Senior District Judge Virginia M. Hernandez Covington sentenced Mohamad Jihad Fakih to four and a half years behind bars for conspiracy to commit wire fraud and attempting to export a stolen motor vehicle.
The sentence, announced by U.S. Attorney Gregory W. Kehoe, follows Fakih’s conviction on August 21, 2025. In addition to his prison term, the court ordered Fakih to forfeit $378,886.96, representing the total proceeds gained through his illegal activities.
Federal court documents detail how Fakih exploited his professional access to dealership websites to submit fraudulent loan applications to automotive financing companies.
Working with co-conspirators, Fakih identified “straw purchasers” and filed falsified paperwork claiming these individuals were buying vehicles that did not actually exist. Once the financing companies approved the loans, the money was sent directly to Fakih as the purported seller. He would then distribute cuts of the cash to his accomplices.
The scheme didn’t stop at fake loans. Fakih also filed fraudulent insurance claims by reporting the non-existent vehicles as stolen. In other cases, he attempted to ship vehicles overseas that were already under lien by the very financing companies he had defrauded.
Investigators determined Fakih repeated these tactics for at least six vehicles, totaling more than $372,000 in losses.
Beyond the paper fraud, Fakih was also caught in a more direct theft involving a luxury SUV. Using a straw purchaser, Fakih obtained a stolen Rolls-Royce Cullinan and attempted to smuggle it out of the Port of Savannah inside a shipping container. To evade law enforcement, the shipping manifest was falsified to hide the container’s true contents.
However, U.S. Customs and Border Protection intercepted the shipment. The stolen Rolls-Royce was valued at approximately $460,000.
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