Car Dealership Owner Claims Mexican Drug Cartel Extorted, Kidnapped Him

A car dealership owner in Bay City, Michigan tells quite the tale of being targeted by a Mexican drug cartel for extorsion, ultimately being kidnapped but miraculously escaped later. Investigators at the FBI don’t seem to buy his story, but it seems the man will have his day in court.

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What the FBI believes is George P. Janssen Jr. invented the cartel story to cover up his financial misdeeds which stretch back to the summer of 2016 and involve millions of dollars. What blew the top off everything was a state audit of Janssen’s dealership, Bay Auto Brokers, in August 2023, where recorded sales and inventory information didn’t line up, reports MLive.

After that failed audit, more of Janssen’s financial troubles started leaking out, which involved loans for cars that might not have existed and bouncing about $1.3 million in checks while moving about the same amount to another financial institution.

Later in 2023, the man went missing for about a month. Miraculously, he appeared on the side of a rural road, his hands zip-tied, his face bloodied, telling a car that came along that he had been kidnapped by a Mexican cartel which had been extorting him all along.

That might sound like quite the story. After all, why target a guy who owns a small car dealership in a small city? Supposedly, it’s because of the man’s car playing skills.  

Not only does Janssen own a car dealership, he’s a four-time World Series of Poke Circuit Ring winner and Mid-States Poker Tour Main Event champion. During his poker career, he’s racked up $440,763 in winnings. While that’s a fair amount of cash, is that really enough to draw the interest of a drug cartel?

He claims that back in October 2021 as he was leaving a poker tournament a cartel hitman held him at gunpoint, giving him a phone, which the cartel used to direct him on where to make cash drops, or else.

The FBI has been involved in this case and an investigation concluded that 20 different financial institutions were defrauded by Janssen starting in June 2016 and ending on October 30, 2023. The total amount taken through deception during that time was $3,934,141. Janssen still owes $1,946,549 of that total.

But add in the loss with the one bank account he bounced several checks on and the total bill is $3,289,834. That’s a lot of cash.

Janssen is facing a single count of financial institution fraud, a felony with a possible punishment of 30 years in federal prison and a $1 million fine.

Image via Bay Auto Brokers/Facebook