The Berlin City Auto Group dealership in Williston on June 27. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger
When Stowe resident William McKibbin was first criminally accused of auto loan fraud this spring, his employer at Berlin City Kia swore that McKibbin had no connection to finances, no access to loans, and nothing in his history that popped up on a background check.
Now, it appears that McKibbin was once Berlin City Kia’s finance manager, or at least gave that impression to customers — and the car dealership has a fraught record of its own.
Grace Pazdan, a consumer rights attorney with Vermont Legal Aid, said that she has seen the dealership “fudge really badly” on a number of loan applications.
“I’ve had several clients that have come to me that are particularly vulnerable, either because they’re elderly, or they’re limited English proficient, or disabled, or a combination of those,” Pazdan said of Berlin City customers. “It appears that they have preyed upon that vulnerability.”
Through her work at Vermont Legal Aid, Pazdan has heard a litany of complaints against car dealerships. Many of those dealerships allegedly engage in similar behavior: inflating income to give outsized loans, changing prices without warning or lying about cars’ histories on the road.
But by almost any metric, Berlin City Kia has an unusually bad track record compared with its Vermont competitors.
The Williston dealership’s customers have registered concerns in a variety of ways. Some reached out to the Attorney General’s Office — which currently has 10 complaints against the business (compared with six for Shearer Chevrolet in South Burlington and three for The Automaster in Shelburne, dealerships of similar size). Others contacted the Better Business Bureau — which gives Berlin City Kia a comparatively low B- rating. Still more wrote online reviews — “Never in my life have I had such a horrible buying experience,” one reads.
In other instances, customers have sued.
Pazdan is currently bringing one such case on behalf of a woman named Marisol Rivera, who claims to have lost $14,000 and may lose her only vehicle because of the dealership’s actions. Rivera’s case has escalated further than most of the other complaints; it is the only one currently in civil court. But the suit’s themes recur in a spate of similar critiques against the company.
Rivera’s story began in 2017, when she and her husband got a divorce. Their divorce agreement stipulated that Rivera’s ex-husband would make monthly payments on a jointly owned van. The next year, Rivera went to Berlin City Kia to ask about trading the van for something smaller. After that visit, a salesman began texting Rivera — first in English, then in her native Spanish — to convince her to buy a new car.
William Walter McKibbin III. Photo supplied by Vermont State Police
The salesman told her that he had heard from her ex-husband, who had agreed to make payments on a smaller vehicle.
In November 2018, Rivera walked into Berlin City Kia to get new windshield wipers. She walked out with a 2017 Kia Soul.
But what Rivera didn’t know — partly because the paperwork was in English — was that the agreement included an additional extended warranty for $2,499. The total payments amounted to 80% of her monthly income. And her ex-husband refused to make any payments on the vehicle because it wasn’t the van, keeping Rivera from receiving the $14,000 that the divorce agreement entitled her to.
“As a result of the defendants’ actions and misrepresentations, plaintiff has suffered credit damage and emotional distress, has forfeited over $14,000 in van payments that her ex-husband was obligated to pay pursuant to the divorce decree, and is at imminent risk of repossession of her only vehicle,” the lawsuit reads.
There is no indication that McKibbin was involved in Rivera’s case, or in any of the other lawsuits or complaints filed with the attorney general.
The potential felon does, however, show up in customer reviews that appear to contradict what general manager Dedrick Casab previously told VTDigger about McKibbin’s position being strictly in sales.
Two 2018 reviews from DealerRater.com name McKibbin as the “finance manager” specifically, consistent with an anonymous tip submitted online to VTDigger. The reviews also reference other employees as sales managers or sales associates (McKibbins’ stated role).
McKibbin has been accused of an extensive, multi-year auto loan scam where he inflated interest rates, in some cases by over 500%. He conducted his business online from offshore locations in the Cayman and Cook islands before quietly moving to Stowe in 2017, where he lived with his wife and son.
Casab declined to comment last week on whether McKibbin ever served as the finance manager, but he did say that McKibbin was a sales manager for the duration of Casab’s time as the general manager. Casab has worked at Berlin City Kia since 1997, according to his LinkedIn profile. He has only been the general manager for three months.
Multiple past and present Berlin City Kia employees — including Casab’s predecessor — did not respond to requests for comment. When asked about who held the finance manager position, several employees said they were busy.
Casab also did not respond to an email and phone call this week requesting comment about other complaints against the dealership.
Legal Aid attorney Grace Pazdan has filed a number of court complaints over fraudulent car loans from several Vermont dealerships. Vermont Legal Aid photo
According to Pazdan, Berlin City Kia is not the only dealership to have a track record of loan fraud. Pazdan’s own critiques encompass a range of dealerships: she recently made a spreadsheet of alleged cases of auto loan fraud, and as of February it included 17 different businesses. Pazdan has filed about a dozen court complaints over fraudulent car dealership loans in the last 18 months.
Berlin City Kia also gets a number of positive online reviews, in most cases more good than bad. DealerRater.com even gives the company a near-perfect 4.9 stars (other dealerships in Vermont have similarly high ratings).
Yet Berlin City Kia may be the only local dealership to have potentially employed a nationwide fraudster as its finance manager — and Pazdan said she has specific concerns about how Berlin City Kia operates.
Some elements of the Rivera case appear in other complaints against the company. According to Pazdan, the stories told by online reviews sound “fairly similar” to her clients’ experiences: there is the overwhelming pressure on customers to buy. There is the income inflation, making customers seem eligible for loans they can’t afford. There is the lack of clear information about the vehicle itself (Rivera was not informed that the Kia had been a rental car).
Pazdan heard a case recently where an older woman with some memory loss ended up paying more than her income indicated she could afford — for a car that was not the one she attempted to purchase. The woman, upset by her day at Berlin City Kia, had a friend come over to double check her papers.
“He looked over the paperwork and came to find that the paperwork that she received from the dealership, first and foremost, was not for the vehicle that was sitting in her driveway,” Pazdan said.
That case was resolved out of court, but Pazdan said that the process was both lengthy and “very distressing” for her client.
In another instance, a customer went months without hearing from Berlin City Kia before they sued her unexpectedly. The customer, Caryn Campbell, expressed frustration over the process in a letter to the court.
The Berlin City Auto Group dealership in Williston. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger
Campbell was sued after failing to pay $2,400 that she had told Berlin City Kia she did not have prior to purchase. After being pressured into buying a car anyway, she claimed that she told a sales manager to destroy the check — which she knew would bounce — and said she would return the vehicle. Berlin City Kia allegedly ignored Campbell for five months before calling the Williston Police Department.
Campbell included a printout of her texts with the sales manager in the court case.
“You were supposed to send me a text message last Friday with all the information you needed and a follow up call on Monday. I received nothing. Then I get a call from the police last night. So needless to say I am a little upset,” Campbell texted the sales manager in February 2017.
Later, once things had escalated, her messages got more desperate. “The only options [sic] I have is to give the car back. Going through the court system will cost me my job and have a ripple effect from there,” she texted a few days after.
The Williston Police Department declined to prosecute. Nine months of radio silence later, Berlin City Kia sued Campbell in small claims court. The court decided in the dealership’s favor.
While Pazdan acknowledged that Berlin City Kia is not unique in its troubles with loans, the attorney said she was worried by its precedent of misleading or manipulating low income customers.
“They knowingly write down the incorrect number,” she said of the business’s loan fraud. “In the Rivera case, when we finally got our hands on the loan application through the court discovery process, it confirmed our very strong suspicion that there was loan application fraud.”
“I have a very strong suspicion that there are a lot of other consumers who have had the same problem with this dealership,” Pazdan added.
Read the story on VTDigger here: Kia dealership that hired alleged fraudster McKibbin has fraught record of its own.