Jeep Dealership Allegedly Forged Buyer's Signature, Sold Him A Car With 6,200 Added Miles And Tacked On An Extra $5,000 Charges

We talk a lot about bad dealership experiences here at Jalopnik, but this one has to be up there with the worst of them, and now a Chrysler-Jeep-Dodge-Ram dealer in the Bronx, New York, is being sued by a customer and a financial services company for alleged crimes.

Despite telling Louis Huertas that the Jeep Grand Cherokee L he was buying had just 13 miles on it, the car he received had over 6,000 miles on the odometer. He was also charged $2,400 more than the agreed-upon price and had nearly $5,000 in unauthorized fees added on, according to a federal lawsuit against Riverdale Chrysler Jeep Dodge Ram. The dealership allegedly offered to buy his old Grand Cherokee at 20% over market value as a trade and pay off his $25,116 loan balance. He agreed to purchase a 2025 GC L with 13 miles on it for $49,000 cash, according to Automotive News. Huertas signed the deal documents with a wet signature — a physical, handwritten signature made with pen and paper — but he wasn't given any copies. Thinking everything was square, he drove his new Grand Cherokee L home, but that's when the problems started.

Later that same day, a representative from GM Financial Services, who backed the deal, contacted him "regarding a discrepancy" in the SUV's mileage, telling him records from the store "falsely certified" 13 miles, the lawsuit alleges. He went out to the car, checked the instrument cluster and saw the odometer actually read 6,216 miles.

Clearly, something went wrong, but exactly what happened is up for a bit of debate. The lawsuit specifically says that "the dealer instead delivered a different vehicle with over 6,000 miles." Here's the thing. I don't think that's actually what happened, and the lawsuit is mistaken. To me, the rest of the lawsuit and Auto News' reporting reads as if there was only ever one Grand Cherokee L, and it was just misrepresented as having 13 miles, rather than 6,216 — meaning there was never a 13-mile GC L on the lot.

Obviously, I wasn't there, but if I had to guess, the dealer and Huertas may have been looking at the trip computer's mileage, which could have read 13 at the time. Again, though, who the hell knows? Maybe there is a second Grand Cherokee L with a baker's dozen miles on it?

Of course, that massive mileage discrepancy wasn't the only alleged issue — they ran far deeper. Huertas decided to look back through his documentation, finding significant differences between what he signed by hand and the sales contract, Auto News reports. That includes the cash price of $51,400 — $2,400 more than the $49,000 I mentioned earlier. It also included an unauthorized $3,882 service contract as well as an unauthorized $1,000 tire and rim contract, the suit alleges. Basically, if the suit is to be believed, the dealer filled the contract with needless crap and didn't tell him.

That's not all, though. Remember how I said Huertas only signed a document with an actual pen? Well, his signature showed up on these documents too — allegedly digitally forged. Here's what the lawsuit read, according to Auto News:

"Upon information and belief, the dealer routinely hides the true cost of borrowing from its customers by failing to disclose increase in vehicle sales prices and the inclusion of unwanted and undisclosed products, as in this case, misstating the amounts financed," the complaint alleges.

Huertas' lawsuit, on which GM Financial is named as a co-defendant since it is the assignee of the sales contract, seeks compensatory and punitive damages for fraud and violation of the Truth in Lending Act, Odometer Act and New York's motor vehicle and deceptive practice law.