A southern Illinois district judge sentenced a St. Louis man to 87 months in federal prison for his involvement in a vehicle sale scheme targeting victims in Madison, Jasper, Bond and Fayette counties.
Alen Saric, 36, pleaded guilty in February to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, one count of interstate transportation of property taken by fraud and one count of aggravated identity theft.
The 11-count indictment also named co-conspirators Valentino Colic, 34, Almir Palic, 25, and Emad Hasanbegovic, 34, all of St. Louis. Colic was sentenced to 145 months in federal prison in March.
Palic was sentenced to 51 months’ imprisonment in February. In addition to prison time, the district judge ordered Saric and Colic to pay more than $1 million in restitution. Palic was ordered to pay a portion of the restitution as well.
Hasanbegovic is facing one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and one count of identity theft. He is scheduled to appear in court on May 21.
According to court documents, the co-conspirators participated in a scheme to defraud private vehicle sellers on Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist with fake cashier’s checks from 2018 until August 2023.
The checks were printed on security-enhanced check paper with the names and logos of real banks with fake routing numbers.
Once the fraudsters possessed a vehicle, they would then resell the vehicle to another individual for cash before the original victim could try to cash the check and realise it was worthless. The co-conspirators issued more than $1,710,999 in fake cashier’s checks.
To keep the co-conspirators’ names out of the chain of title, they used the names of prior victims to buy and sell the vehicles and forged signatures to complete documents such as titles and bills of sale.
When posing as the victims, they often used copies of their photo IDs they had received during the previous sales. By writing bad checks from prior victims, the conspiracy caused even more financial hardship by revictimizing the same people repeatedly.
The fraudsters bought vehicles from victims in Madison, Jasper, Bond and Fayette counties within the Southern District of Illinois and are estimated to have defrauded victims out of more than a million dollars.
Colic and Saric admitted to driving the vehicles over state lines from Illinois to Missouri to benefit the scheme.
