A businessman who defrauded customers for almost a decade to build one of the world’s biggest collections of classic cars has been sentenced to eight years in prison. According to the Associated Press, the Indiana-based fraudster netted over $180 million from his payroll processing center in Elkhart, Indiana, using an illegal scheme known as check-kiting – a form of check fraud that is used to inflate account balance using checks in a specific manner to access credit which isn’t actually authorized. The 70-year-old used the ill-gotten funds to amass a large car collection and also to support an ultra-luxury lifestyle. Najeeb Khan reportedly used the funds to buy a light aircraft, a yacht, a helicopter, mansions in Arizona and Michigan, and homes in Florida and Montana. However, nothing even comes close to his car collection which includes close to 250 highly valuable vintage cars.
According to reports, Khan perpetrated the fraud between 2011 and 2019, ripping off more than 1,700 clients through his company Interlogic Outsourcing Inc. By the time the scheme collapsed, all the defrauded clients lost out on money Khan’s company had withdrawn for payroll taxes. The businessman had already siphoned off about $73 million for himself by the time the fraud came to light in 2019. The court ordered Khan to pay $121 million in restitution to KeyBank and $27 million to the clients he stole money from. Additionally, he was also ordered to pay $9.8 million to the IRS for taxes he didn’t pay for five years. During the sentencing, Khan told a federal judge that he had been “blinded by greed.”
To recoup the money, Khan’s mammoth car collection was sold by RM Sotheby’s in October 2020. The auction grossed over $44 million with seven cars fetching seven-figure sums. The jaw-dropping collection included everything from a 1952 Ferrari 225 S Berlinetta to a 1955 Cooper-Jaguar T38 Mk II, a 1953 Fiat 8V Supersonic by China, and three Jaguar continuation cars – 1957 XKSS, a 1963 E-Type Lightweight, and a 1955 D-Type. Absolute madness! However, all of it is gone and Khan has been left with his trusted 2005 GMC Yukon.
