A former used car salesman who defrauded his boss of more than $259,000 while trying to keep up appearances as a successful businessman will be sentenced next month by a B.C. Supreme Court judge.
Crown prosecutor Kevin Marks asked Justice Peter Willcox to send Alireza Toraj Zolnasr, 42, to jail for two years for a scam he ran for 15 months while he was sales manager of the used car lot for Pacific Honda in North Vancouver.
Marks described how Zolnasr was a well liked manager who earned more than $100,000 a year and lived in the British Properties when he began a convoluted scheme to defraud his employer in 2005.
The scam involved creating phony paperwork, including falsifying purchase agreements, while buying and selling used cars from various wholesaler lots. In some cases cheques written by the wholesalers were never deposited with Pacific Honda. In others, Zolnasr sold cars while still recording them as inventory on the car lot.
Marks said altogether the shell game was played out over 10 transactions involving 28 used cars.
The ruse was only discovered after one of the wholesalers called Pacific Honda and tipped the company off to the fraud. When they checked, bosses found 30 vehicles unaccounted for.
Marks said the breach of trust was a shock to the business owners and other employees. "There were no checks and balances in place because he was the check and balance."
Marks said Zolnasr perpetrated the scam because he was in debt and wanted to keep up appearances as a successful businessman.
But Michael Tammen, Zolnasr's defence lawyer, said there's no evidence his client lined his pockets to support a lavish lifestyle.
Tammen said Zolnasr was under tremendous pressure to "move stock" on the used car lot and found himself unable to sell the cars at a profit.
He began to create false invoices to give the impression he was selling the cars at higher amounts and then tried to make up the difference with subsequent sales, said Tammen.
If he hadn't inflated the figures, "there would have been a sea of red ink in the Pacific Honda books and a pink slip for him," said Tammen. "There's a real pressure on a used car salesman to move those cars.
"For a time, it all looked good," but the success was really a house of cards, said Tammen. "It did all come crashing down on him."
The sentencing hearing will continue next month, when the judge has asked to see details about whether Zolnasr has paid any of the money back to Pacific Honda.
The car dealership is also suing Zolnasr in civil court to recoup its loss.
