Federal prosecutors say Lei Zhou financed a $114,000 Corvette with one stranger’s identity and covered the down payment with a forged check in another’s.
On Oct. 4, 2022, Zhou used a stolen identity to get $114,175.31 in financing for a 2021 Chevrolet Corvette from a car dealership in Greenwich, Connecticut, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Connecticut. The down payment was a forged $14,000 check made out in the name of a different identity-theft victim. The Corvette then went to New York to be resold.
Zhou, 43, of Flushing, Queens, who also goes by “Lei Lei,” was sentenced Sept. 23 in Hartford by U.S. District Judge Sarala V. Nagala to 42 months in federal prison. He pleaded guilty on May 22 to one count of conspiracy to commit bank and wire fraud and one count of aggravated identity theft. He has been in custody since his arrest on Aug. 30, 2024.
Six cars, $650,000, one showroom
The Corvette was one transaction in a larger pattern. Prosecutors say Zhou and his co-conspirators used stolen personal and financial information, along with stolen or counterfeit identity cards belonging to multiple victims, to apply for loans to buy or lease at least six luxury vehicles from the same Greenwich dealership. The retail value of those vehicles topped $650,000. The plan, according to the government, was to drive them to New York and sell them.
That’s where the plan ran into how car loans work. A vehicle bought on credit isn’t just a vehicle. It comes with a lender, a lien, a title that names who the bank thinks it’s dealing with, and a payment schedule that starts arriving whether or not the person on the paperwork ever set foot in the showroom.
Prosecutors didn’t spell out how the lenders caught up. They said only that most of the vehicles were repossessed before they could be resold.
It’s a close cousin of a scheme we looked at last month, in which fraudsters skip the break-in and simply finance the car. The appeal is obvious. No broken glass, no hot-wired ignition, and the keys are handed over. The drawback is that every one of those cars leaves the lot attached to a loan somebody is going to want paid.
The same name, a different luxury car
Zhou wasn’t the only person from this crew to go before Judge Nagala. In April, she sentenced co-conspirator Huachun Zheng, 43, also known as “Ri Yuan,” of Queens, to 30 months in prison, according to a separate Justice Department release. Zheng pleaded guilty Jan. 6 to the same two charges.
On Sept. 27, 2022, exactly one week before the Corvette deal, Zheng used a stolen identity to get $94,742.73 in financing for a 2019 Porsche Panamera from the same Greenwich dealership, prosecutors said. That car was also repossessed before it could be resold.
Then there’s what happened 17 days before that.
On Sept. 10, 2022, Zheng was arrested in Nassau County, New York, in connection with a scheme to buy jewelry with fraudulent checks. When he was arrested, according to prosecutors, he was driving a Maserati bought from a dealership in Jamaica, Queens. That Maserati was registered in the name of the same victim whose identity Zheng would use later that month to buy the Panamera in Greenwich.
What the sentences mean
Both men pleaded guilty to aggravated identity theft, a federal charge that carries a mandatory two-year prison term on top of whatever sentence comes with the underlying fraud. Zhou’s sentence also came with a record. Prosecutors say he has prior state convictions for menacing with a weapon, aggravated harassment and attempted robbery, plus a federal methamphetamine trafficking conviction in the Southern District of New York.
The FBI investigated the case with help from the Greenwich Police Department and the New York City Police Department. Assistant U.S. Attorney Elena L. Coronado prosecuted it.
Easy to lose in all of this are the identity-theft victims, whose names were used to finance cars they never drove. For anyone worried about ending up in that position, a credit freeze at all three bureaus is free and blocks most new-credit applications. And as we’ve reported, the scanners dealers use to check your license aren’t a guarantee either.
Would you put up with a slower sale, like a second ID check or a call to your bank, if it meant nobody could finance a Corvette in your name?