A U.S. District Court judge sentenced three San Jose men to prison for conspiring to roll back the odometers on high-mileage vehicles in order to sell them for higher prices, the U.S. Attorney's Office announced Friday.
Seymur Khalilov, 32, was sentenced to two years in prison by U.S. District Court Judge Susan Illston, who also sentenced Ramil Heydarov, 31, and Orkhan Aliyev, 32, to 20 months in prison each, the attorney's office said.
The three had pleaded guilty in October 2021 to one count each of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, according to the attorney's office.
The three conspired to purchase high-mileage vehicles, roll back the odometers and falsify documentation to make the vehicles seem newer, according to the defendants' plea agreements, prosecutors said. This enabled the defendants to sell the vehicles at "significant profits," according to prosecutors
In their plea agreements, the three admitted to selling least 78 vehicles with altered odometers for a total of $550,000, prosecutors said. The timeframe was between at least October 2017 and December 2020.
The defendants also admitted they advertised the vehicles for sale on Craigslist and used doctored driver's licenses, according to prosecutors.