A St. Charles County man is headed to prison for five years after running a business where he went to the DMV so clients didn’t have to—a business prosecutors showed was based on fraud.
Gary Wilds, 48, who was sentenced yesterday, previously pleaded guilty to 33 charges of wire fraud, conspiracy and identity theft. For about eight years starting in 2014, Wilds operated Pinnacle Concierge, with a tagline: “We do a little bit of everything to make your life easier.” The business detailed and blinged out cars with custom wraps, but also offered to register clients’ new cars with the Missouri Department of Revenue.
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In many cases, Wild got between $1,600 or $2,000 from clients to register their cars and trucks with the state. However, Wilds instructed accomplices at a DMV in St. Charles County to not only represent the vehicles as having passed safety and emissions tests, but to also apply a common carrier tax exemption, an exemption reserved for big vehicles used for commercial transportation purposes. That bit of fraud got registrations down to as low as $14 in some cases. Wilds kicked $100 over to the DMV employee via Venmo and then kept the remainder for himself. At its peak, Wilds and the DMV workers were running as many as 10 phony registrations a day.
Prosecutor Tracy Berry said that Wilds carried out this scheme as many as 300 times (he’ll have to pay $335,000 in restitution, suggesting the extent to which he was able to defraud the government). It started to fall apart when his clients began getting notices from the state saying their vehicles either hadn’t been registered or had been fraudulently registered.
Wilds appeared in court with slicked back hair and a blue suit a little too long at the arms. His attorney, John Davis, described Wilds as deeply enmeshed in his St. Charles County community, pointing to the dozen or so people who had shown up in court to support him. Wilds described himself to the judge as a people pleaser and asked the judge to spare him from being kept from his young son for a long duration.
Davis questioned how many of Wilds’ clients didn’t know something was up with the deal Wilds was giving them. “If I pay a hundred, a thousand dollars, and don’t have to spend a quarter of my day at the DMV, I’m thinking something’s not right here.” He wanted Wilds to serve a sentence closer to two years.
Davis also alluded to other, unindicted individuals involved in the conspiracy who supplied Wilds with U.S. Department of Transportation numbers that were integral to the fraudulent application of the tax exemption at the DMV. “There are others who aren’t going to be in this courtroom,” Davis said.
Berry retorted that the only evidence for those unidentified people’s involvement was Wilds’ own word, and he was hardly a credible witness. In addition to this case, he has prior charges for drugs and stealing in St. Charles County. She wanted to see Wilds in prison for closer to 11 years.
In issuing the five-year sentence, U.S. District Court Judge Matt Schelp said that he wasn’t convinced that Wilds’ scheme was as sophisticated as the prosecutors stated it was, noting the use of Venmo. “The bottom line for me on this case, is that this is just a scam,” he said.
However, he also made it clear that Wilds was the ringleader. Two weeks ago, Schelp sentenced to probation one of the co-conspirators, a former DMV employee named Michelle Boyer, who was in court with the help of a walker. She’d undergone amputations as a result of her diabetes and many years ago suffered a pair of back to back strokes. Her attorney noted that many of the instances of fraud she’d abetted Wilds in carrying out had occurred after those strokes impaired her cognition. (Another DMV worker was also sentenced to probation; a third still needs to be sentenced.)
At the starting of the hearing, Schelp asked Wilds if he was satisfied with his legal representation, a typically pro forma question the answer to which can have bearing on any future appeals based on an ineffective counsel. Wilds was seated between Davis and his other attorney, John Stobbs.
“I am very happy with John Davis, your honor,” said Wilds. “Me and John Stobbs had our difficult moments.”
Wilds said that he regretted not taking a plea deal and instead pleading guilty to all 33 charges but that he didn’t want to be difficult. “I don’t want to ruin anyone’s day. I’ll just say yes. I’m fine.” Wilds apologized to the judge for being scatterbrained. “I got a million things going through my head.”
Replied the judge: “Well, this is one you might want to dial in on.”
Wilds was allowed to leave court on his own. He will have to report to prison in the next few weeks.
