BOSTON, Aug. 3, 2018—A used car dealer who pleaded guilty in connection with a 2009 auto inspection scheme was convicted yesterday of seeking to obtain a fraudulent salvage title by switching vehicle identification numbers, Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel F. Conley said.

Chelsea District Court Judge D. Dunbar Livingston found KENNETH LAFAUCI, a.k.a. KENNETH LEFAUSI, guilty of making false statements in an application for a motor vehicle title and removing or altering a vehicle identification number. Livingston sentenced Lafauci to 18 months in a house of correction with six months to serve and the balance suspended for two years. Lafauci, age 61 of Topsfield, must also pay a $500 fine.

During a two-day, jury-waived trial, Assistant District Attorney Kevin Bergin presented evidence and testimony proving that Lafauci either removed the visible VIN information on a 2013 Cadillac Escalade that was suitable only for spare parts or replaced it with that of a 2011 Escalade that could be rebuilt safely.

Bergin proved that Lafauci brought the vehicle to the State Police Salvage Inspection Unit on Washington Street in Revere last year to be inspected by the State Police Salvage Title Section. Lafauci represented that it was a 2013 Escalade that had sustained front end damage. Troopers reviewed Lafauci’s accompanying paperwork, which indicated that he had used parts from a 2011 Escalade to perform repairs on it.

In the course of their inspection, troopers observed a large gouge and scratches to the steel plate on which the Escalade’s public vehicle identification number was stamped, as if it had been cut in two. They also observed that the Escalade’s doorjamb was missing a “load label” sticker that would have borne the VIN. Another sticker located in the vehicle’s glove box was present – but the VIN stamped on it corresponded to the 2011 Escalade that Lafauci said he had used only for spare parts to rebuild the 2013 vehicle. When troopers used an electronic diagnostic tool that reads, among other things, a modern vehicle’s VIN, it also gave the number corresponding to the 2011 Escalade and not the vehicle Lafauci claimed was a 2013 Escalade.

Troopers confronted Lafauci with this information, asking whether he had perhaps transposed the VINs from the spare parts vehicle and the salvage vehicle on his paperwork. He stated that he had not – and then stated that he had to leave because a family member had gone to the hospital. Lafauci later contacted the Registry of Motor Vehicles and the Salvage Inspection Unit in attempts to retrieve the paperwork he had submitted.

In the days that followed, troopers consulted with the National Insurance Crimes Bureau, Cadillac experts and dealers, the auctioneer who had sold the 2011 and 2013 vehicles, and the RMV. The results of those consultations, Bergin argued at trial, proved that Lafauci had fraudulently submitted the 2011 Escalade to be titled as a 2013 Escalade.

In the course of the proceedings, Bergin admitted Lafauci’s 2011 conviction for bribery, which was incurred during a different scheme. In that case, Lafauci colluded with others, including a former State trooper, to obtain fraudulent inspection forms for uninspected salvage vehicles at Brother’s Auto Body in Revere. Lafauci and the trooper both received suspended sentences, though prosecutors had recommended jail time for the trooper’s actions.

Lafauci was represented in the most recent case by attorney Kevin Calnan.

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All defendants are presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.