DA: Wichita used car dealership fined $159K for lying to buyers, withholding titles
A former used car dealership in Wichita and its owners can no longer sell vehicles in Kansas legally after transactions that local authorities say involved deceiving customers and withholding paperwork.
IDeal Enterprises LLC and its owners, Adam and Andrea Newbrey, have also been fined $159,328.41 as part of a default judgment filed Friday in a court case that sought restitution for customers who were lied to about vehicles they bought from a south Broadway dealership called iDeal Motors, the Sedgwick County District Attorney’s Office announced Friday in a news release.
No one from the dealership could be reached immediately for comment Friday. A phone number listed online did not work, and no one answered an email sent to an address listed on iDeal Motors Facebook page.
The DA’s Office said it began investigating the Newbreys and their dealership, 4435 S. Broadway, after two customers complained about their purchases.
In one case, the dealership told a buyer that a vehicle was a salvage when it was really a scrap car, sold it without the proper license and used an unlicensed salesperson for the transaction, the news release said.
In the other case, the dealership sold a vehicle that had open safety recalls without telling the buyer about them.
Neither car buyer received a title within 60 days, which is required under Kansas law, the DA’s Office said.
The dealership also gave their customers multiple temporary registration permits, which is illegal, the release says.
The default judgment, signed by Sedgwick County District Judge Deborah Hernandez Mitchell, follows an earlier consent judgment from 2019 where iDeal and Adam Newbrey “promised to make a good faith effort to resolve new consumer complaints” but allegedly failed to do so and “willfully failed to cooperate with the investigation,” the DA’s Office said.
More than $24,000 of the money the Newbreys have been ordered to pay is owed to the customers for restitution. The rest is $90,000 in civil penalties, a $40,000 fine for violations of the 2019 consent judgment and other expenses, according to the DA’s Office.
The judgment also revokes iDeal’s business license and bars the Newbreys from selling vehicles in the state, the release says.
This story was originally published August 26, 2022 at 6:08 PM.
