LA PORTE, Texas – Employees of a Houston-area car dealership that abruptly closed it doors claim that they too are victims of the dealership’s mismanagement of money.
Bayside Mitsubishi along Highway 146 in La Porte closed suddenly on Dec. 7, according to the manager of the dealership, Kenny O’Kane.
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The reason: They went broke.
O’Kane blamed the mismanagement of funds on prior leaders, saying he was sent in to clean up the messy financial mess.
That includes accusations that customers who traded in vehicles during car purchases never had their original loans paid off. On top of that, registration paperwork was never filed and license plates weren’t issued.
“That’s a legal obligation that the owner needs to take care of and he’s going to take care of it,” O’Kane told KPRC 2′s Gage Goulding last week. “He’s in the process of trying to sell the property and he will take care of that. He’s got to take care of that. I think it will happen otherwise I probably wouldn’t be here. And I believe in the owner that he wants to take care of it, wants to do the right thing.”
Now, former employees are claiming they too are victims of the same problem.
At least three employees have came forward to KPRC 2. One of which is Kori St. Martin.
“I was just a couple months shy of coming up on a year,” she said. “It was really rewarding being able to help people get into cars.”
She bought a used vehicle from Bayside Mitsubishi and then traded that car in this past June.
St. Martin and her fiancée, who both worked on the sales floor at the dealership, only found out that their old car wasn’t paid off months after they purchased their new Mitsubishi Outlander.
“It was right about the end of August when that payment was coming up around,” she said.
Her bank calling her asking why she was late on the payment.
Kori St. Martin: “I’m like, what do you mean? My payment’s late? I traded that vehicle in. That’s about whenever I found out that, oh what’s going on here.”
Gage Goulding: “Obviously, you have the luxury of just walking in to work and saying, ‘Hey, what’s going on?’”
Kori St. Martin: “Right. So I did. I went to one of my managers. At first, I kind of was told, ‘You know, it’ll be taken care of.’”
Well, it never was.
Neither was one of her coworkers trade-in loans, or her customers, like Autyana Hodges, who we interviewed last week.
All of them stuck trying to find out a way to pay two car loans.
None of them able to come up with the money.
“We’re going to be living penny to penny. We’re not going to do that,” Hodges said.
Kori St. Martin: “Roughly on the closer end of $1,500 a month.”
Gage Goulding: “Is that doable?”
Kori St. Martin: “My rent’s not even $1,500 a month.”
Gage Goulding “How many trade-ins did you take in during car sales during that period where there might have been a red flag?”
Kori St. Martin: “Personally, a couple like three [or] four, but as a dealership, there was probably quite a bit more taken in.”
Meanwhile, St. Martin says management at the dealership still pushed the sales floor to make deals, including taking in trade-in vehicles.
“They were basically telling all these customers, telling us to tell all these customers, ‘Hey, y’all, we’re going to give you this for your trade. We’ll pay it off. Don’t worry about it. You’ll be OK.’ And then here they are. Not not doing any of that,” she said. “Knowing how I feel and then knowing that I’m part of the reason why that happened, not that it was in my control, but that it happened. It really like, it sucks.”
There’s still no light at the end of the tunnel.
The gates to the dealership are locked, the owner is being sued for millions and that same owner never answered our calls.
