ST. MARYS -- Not long ago, St. Marys Ford-Mercury was the only place in Pleasants County where people could buy a new car.

Now the dealership on the town's main street is padlocked and being treated as a crime scene. And the dealership's owner, Sherman "Brett" Dils IV, is facing lots of questions from customers, fellow car dealers and the law.

Law enforcement officials and court records allege Dils wrote about $800,000 in bad checks to buy cars to resell at his dealership from dealers in 13 other states.

In addition, about 75 of the dealership's customers allege Dils either failed to pay off liens on cars they traded in or did not file the necessary state paperwork related to new cars they bought from St. Marys Ford-Mercury.

The problem got so big that the state shutdown St. Mary's Ford-Mercury in April and stripped Dils of both his business license and his license to deal cars.

"For the situation we are in, it's a sizable fraud considering it is a single dealership to defraud that many customers and to defraud that many dealerships," said Ken Gournic, U.S Postal Inspector with the Pittsburgh division of the Postal Inspection Service.

Dils was arrested Wednesday morning in Gallatin, Tenn., on three warrants relating to problems with his business, according to Pleasants County Sheriff Ted Maston. Maston said several states have warrants for Dils.

Dils' Parkersburg-based attorney, George Cosenza could not be reached for comments.

Pleasants County Prosecutor Tim Sweeney said he does not believe this is a case of a businessman innocently getting behind in his bills and then getting stuck in a bad situation.

"A lot of times a business will get behind, but when it's done repeatedly and no money is in the account, that tells you something," he said.

The Deals Start Here

Sweeney said his office first learned about the problems with St. Marys Ford-Mercury last fall. Several car companies called local law enforcement to complain that a local businessman had used checks to buy cars from them, and the businessman's account had insufficient funds when they attempted to cash those checks.

Sweeney said it's not unusual for dealers to pass bad checks. He said if a customer walks in wanting a specific car in a specific color and with certain amenities that is not on the lot, a dealer will call other dealerships to find the right car. The dealer then will order and pay for the car with a check that may or may not have sufficient funds. But since the car is a guaranteed sell, the check amount is paid off within a few days.

Usually the checks pass with no problems.

But that didn't happen with some of the checks from St. Marys Ford-Mercury.

"Sometimes I would get calls from dealers who had gotten a bad check, and I'd call down to (Dils) and tell him he needed to straighten this out," Sweeney said. "The dealers just wanted to get paid."

But after a while, the checks started to catch up with Dils.

Dealers weren't getting their money.

At least six dealers ended up pressing criminal false pretenses charges against Dils.

Sweeney said local law enforcement officers found out about some of those charges and went to a local magistrate in October to get fugitive from justice warrants on Dils. The once-prominent car dealer was arrested on one of those warrants and spent a few nights in jail. The other warrant, Sweeney said, was dropped after Dils paid the dealer the money due.

But even after his trip to jail, Dils kept writing bad checks, Sweeney said. His office kept hearing of different dealerships that were having problems getting paid. So Sweeney started keeping a list. Soon he had a list of complaints from about 15 dealerships in 13 different states all relating to checks written between Oct. 20, 2004, and April 29, 2005, including:

• Two North Carolina dealerships for checks worth $35,523.50 and $29,447.
• Two Illinois dealerships for checks worth $17,616, $38,196 and $39,436.
• Two New York dealerships for checks worth $46,610 and $31,976.
• Two Virginia dealerships for checks worth $33,018, $16,008 and $23,078.
• An Indiana dealership for a check worth $26,208.
• Two Ohio dealerships for a checks worth $30,339 and $21,260.
• A Georgia dealership for a check worth $22,759.

"This tops $1 million easily," Sweeney said. "When you are talking about $20,000 to $40,000 per check, you get to $1 million pretty quick."

Sweeney said at first he was shocked to hear so many complaints about Dils and St. Marys Ford-Mercury. The Dils name is fairly well known in the central Ohio Valley, and the family has been in the car dealership business for generations.

"The Dils name is a fine name in business," said West Virginia Division of Motor Vehicles Commissioner Doug Stump. "Dils Motors in Parkersburg has a fine name. What happened in St. Marys was different."

Buyers Affected, Too

But dealers weren't the only ones hurt by Dils' deals.

Sweeney said about 75 consumers have complained either to his office, the Pleasants County Sheriff's Department, St. Marys Police Department, West Virginia Attorney General's Office of Consumer Protection or the state's Division of Motor Vehicles. The consumers allege Dils either failed to properly title the cars with the state or failed to pay off liens on cars the customers traded in when buying the new car.

"Now they are getting calls from financial companies like GMAC or Chrysler Corp. asking where their payments are," Sweeney said.

And the customers are coming from a wide area. Stump said 52 of the customers who had problems with St. Mary's Ford-Mercury were from West Virginia. About 20 customers were from Ohio. The rest were from Pennsylvania.

In many of the cases, customers bought their cars online from reputable Internet car sites. They typed in the type of car they wanted and were hooked up with a number of different dealers all offering different prices. St. Marys Ford-Mercury had the best offers.

So the customers bought the cars.

"It was just like any other transaction," said Phillip Isner, a Charleston businessman who bought a 2005 Jeep Liberty from St. Marys Ford-Mercury online. "The only difference was instead of going to the dealership to sign the papers and pick up my car, they brought the car to me."

St. Marys Ford-Mercury found customers all over the state and region. South Charleston. Grafton. Parkersburg. Ohio. Even Pennsylvania.

"It was a pretty far-flung operation," Sweeney said.

Some consumers were also driving on expired temporary tags and had no means of getting permanent tags, Sweeney and Stump said, because Dils never turned in the proper paperwork to the state.

Investigation Under Way

The DMV heard about the complaints at about the same time Sweeney did. Stump said his office sent auditors into the dealership to go over the paperwork and books. What they found, Stump said, was a dealership in shambles.

"We found titles of cars that weren't fulfilled to the person that purchased it, were not delivered. We found too many temporary tags, and too many dealer plates were unaccounted for," he said.

Stump and Sweeney said much of their time now is dedicated to helping consumers who were left stuck by their transactions.

About 52 of the 75 consumer-related complaints have been addressed. Either the owners have been given titles to their cars, or they have been given temporary tags with a longer expiration date.

Authorities also have been working with lenders who handle liens on some of the customers' trade-in cars. Stump said between 20 and 30 cars were repossessed from the St. Marys Ford-Mercury lot by banks that had liens on the cars. Other banks have agreed to forego the first loan payment until the matter is resolved.

But some customers' problems are bigger than either Sweeney's office or Stump's office can handle.

"There are about seven that can't be resolved," Stump said.

Sweeney said the worst part is some dealers who received bad checks for cars Dils bought ended up listing the cars in the National Crime Information Center database as stolen. If a person driving that car was spotted by a police officer, the driver could be pulled over and charged with driving a stolen auto.

"We're talking about cars that were paid for in good faith, titled by the owner and are considered stolen," he said. "We've actually had situations where law enforcement has called me, wanting us to pick up a car as a stolen vehicle from a citizen here in Pleasants County, from a citizen who had completely paid for the car ... and were completely innocent victims of the situation."

Now all customer complaints are being turned over to postal inspectors, Sweeney said.

"We all looked at the case -- me, the Sheriff's Department, the State Police -- and with all of the interstate transactions we thought it was something the U.S. Postal Inspector should handle. We felt they were in the best position to do something."

Gournic said since May his office has been investigating Dils and St. Marys Ford-Mercury for possibly violating federal mail fraud statutes.

Dils' problems may not be easily resolved, even if no additional charges are filed against him. Stump said the dealer owes $40,000 in unpaid fees, $300,000 in unpaid liens and about $800,000 for checks that had insufficient funds to be cashed.

Stump said the state Legislature created a dealer recovery fund several years ago to help consumers when a dealer sells them a bad car. But that fund has only $350,000 to $400,000 in it.

That's not enough, he said, to take care of a problem as big as this.

"That would take all of the money in the fund," Stump said. "It would take more that all of the money in the fund."

Sweeney said Dils' lawyer, Cosenza, indicated his client is trying to negotiate a way to pay off the dealers and amend the problems with customers. Stump and Sweeney hope that happens.

Even if it does happen, Gournic said he is not sure it would negate any federal charges if they are filed.

"If you rob a bank, just because you give the money back it's still a crime," he said.

In the meantime, the lone new car dealership in Pleasants County remains under lock. And customers of St. Marys Ford-Mercury, be they car buyers or fellow dealers, wait to see whether Dils will be able to deliver on the promises he made many months ago.