A Galveston County judge has handed down one of the harshest sentences ever seen in an automotive fraud case. Richard Thomas Finley, former owner of Classic American Street Rods in the San Leon-Bacliff area, will spend 60 years in prison after a jury found him guilty of felony theft exceeding $300,000. Prosecutors say Finley ran a yearslong scheme built on a simple pitch: pay for a professional engine swap, and drive away with a stronger, more reliable classic car.
The Pitch Behind the Scheme
According to the Galveston County District Attorney’s Office, Finley marketed his shop as a trusted destination for engine conversions, telling customers he could swap out aging, unreliable powerplants for newer ones. It’s an appealing offer in the classic car world, where owners often want modern dependability without giving up vintage styling. Customers paid substantial deposits upfront, a common practice in restoration work, before their vehicles disappeared into the shop for months, and in some cases years, with little explanation.
Stripped Parts and Stalled Projects
Court testimony described a pattern that repeated across dozens of cases: long silences, vague updates, and projects that never moved forward. Investigators allege that in several instances, original parts were quietly pulled from customer vehicles and sold off rather than reinstalled. Every victim who testified told the court the same thing: the engine work they paid for was never finished.
A Five-Year Investigation Closes In
The case took years to build. The Galveston County Sheriff’s Office and the county’s Auto Crimes Task Force spent roughly five years piecing together complaints from owners across the region, eventually identifying 72 victims and tracing more than $498,000 in losses back to Finley’s shop. Investigators recovered upwards of 20 vehicles during the process and returned them to their rightful owners. Finley was convicted in December, and the 60-year sentence followed shortly after.
Why This Sentence Stands Out
Restoration fraud cases don’t always end this severely. A New York shop owner convicted last November of misrepresenting work and falsifying vehicle acquisitions received just two years in prison, despite a case involving more than $2.5 million in losses tied to three victims. Texas prosecutors leaned heavily on the sheer number of people affected by Finley’s operation, arguing that the scale of the deception, not just the dollar figure, made the crime especially serious.
Not an Isolated Problem
Stories about restorations gone wrong aren’t new to the classic car community. We’ve previously covered a case where a Mustang owner spent years fighting to get his car back from a shop that never finished the job, and separately, a Nissan Rogue buyer who discovered her vehicle carried three different VINs tied to a cloning scheme. Both cases share a common thread with the Finley conviction: trust placed in a business relationship, exploited long before anyone realized something was wrong.
Bigger Fraud, Bigger Consequences
Law enforcement agencies across the country appear to be taking coordinated vehicle fraud more seriously. Investigators in Wisconsin, for example, are pursuing a case against an alleged street takeover organizer accused of building a modified Hellcat 300 from stolen components. Cases like these, together with the Finley conviction, suggest prosecutors are increasingly willing to pursue lengthy sentences when fraud spans multiple victims rather than a single, isolated incident.
Protecting Yourself Before You Sign Over the Keys
Classic car owners considering a big restoration or engine swap can take a few concrete steps to avoid becoming the next cautionary tale. Get a written contract that spells out the scope of work, the timeline, and the parts being used. Push for milestone-based payments instead of one large deposit upfront, so a shop only gets paid as work is verifiably completed. Ask for photos or in-person progress checks at each stage, and be wary of any shop that grows evasive when you ask for an update. Finley’s 72 victims trusted a business with vehicles that, in many cases, represented decades of memories and money. That trust cost them nearly half a million dollars combined, and it cost him six decades of freedom.