A man is in jail after detectives say he tried to scam a southwest Miami-Dade business out of an expensive boat, knowing he didn’t have enough money to buy it.
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Anthony Vallejo, the business manager at Riva Motorsports Miami, said Angel Reyes recently tried to buy a boat from them for $146,000.
“We thought it was a normal deal like any other deal,” Vallejo said.
Reyes told them he made a wire transfer, but never showed confirmation, Vallejo said. Instead, he showed them a receipt showing that he deposited a check into the business’s bank account.
“It was a little unorthodox; we gave it the benefit of the doubt,” Vallejo said.
A few days later, the bank told Riva Motorsports that the check Reyes had deposited was returned because of insufficient funds, according to an arrest report.
Detectives said Reyes used a check kiting scheme, which is a form of bank fraud where someone takes advantage of the delay between the deposit of a check and when the bank discovers that the check is not backed by enough money.
According to the report, Reyes deposited a check from a closed bank account into another bank account and used the delay to pay Riva Motorsports, making it seem like he had enough money.
“A little uneasy, it’s a big amount of money,” Vallejo said. “We definitely wanted to get this person off the street.”
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Even though Reyes knew he didn’t have enough money to buy the boat, he still tried to move forward with the sale, the report said.
“He was saying, hey, everything is good in my account; I hope you guys are ready to go,” Vallejo said.
Vallejo said they got the sheriff’s office involved, and when Reyes came to pick up the boat last Friday, detectives arrested him. Employees from the business recorded the moment the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office walked in and put Reyes in handcuffs.
“146,000 is not a small amount of money, and we’re a pretty big business, but it could hurt a lot of people to lose that much money,” Vallejo said.
According to the report, Reyes later admitted to detectives that he knew he only had $60,000 in his bank account when he made the deposit to buy the boat.
“We do business the right way,” Vallejo said. “We’re very transparent with people and not really a lot of room for fraud.”
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