Bart Reagor speaks publicly for first time since fraud claims against dealership
In the wake of the legal wrangling surrounding the demise of the Reagor-Dykes auto dealerships, founder Bart Reagor has not spoken out publicly.
To recap, Shane Smith, who was Chief Financial Officer of the Reagor-Dykes Auto Group, has pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. The charge asserts that Smith and his co-conspirators sent phony financial information to Ford Motor Credit, the division of the company responsible for financing your automobile purchase. And that phony information, the charge says, amounted to $27 million.
RELATED: Filing: Rick Dykes agrees to $58.7 million judgment to Ford Credit
Well now, we have heard from the man whose name is on the dealership and he spoke with Wayne Dolcefino of Dolcefino Consulting, an investigative firm in Houston. Reagor says he is as confused as anyone about how all this happened.
“Sixteen days before they came in here and destroyed my company, they were telling me thank you Bart, you are a great dealer, you are one of the best dealers we have, let’s celebrate your success,” Reagor said. “All of a sudden, I am on vacation halfway across the world, and they tell me I owe them 40 million dollars. There’s no way.”
RELATED: Court documents say Reagor-Dykes fraud could be among largest in U.S. history
He says the toll on him and his family has been immense.
“It’s been hard on me because of my family, it’s been really hard on my wife. She doesn’t even want to go to the grocery store”, Reagor told Dolcefino Consulting. “I have had to pray a lot, and I have had to call on the Lord a lot, call on my friends a lot and my family. Yeah, it was hard. It was the hardest thing I have been through in my life. You really find out who your friends are when something like this happens.”
Reagor says though, this isn't the end of the story.
RELATED: Reagor-Dykes Auto Group issues written apology
“Now that I have had almost eleven months to figure out what went wrong, what went wrong was there was a lot of things going on in the financial area of our business that were corrupt,” Reagor said. “I am not done by a long shot. A lot of people made a lot of money on this game at my expense.”
Meanwhile, Smith could be looking at a sentence of up to 20 years in prison and perhaps, a quarter of a million dollars in restitution.
RELATED: Court allows Ford Credit lawsuit to proceed against Bart Reagor, Rick Dykes
