At Porsche dealership, a raw deal

Pompano Beach firm says an ex-VP defrauded clients of $2.6M

Pompano Beach-based Champion Porsche is promising to reimburse $2.6 million in deposits for new sports cars it says its former vice president of marketing stole from customers before disappearing earlier this month.

The dealership is accusing its former employee, Shiraaz Sookralli, of masterminding an audacious caper that has become the subject of rampant discussion over the past week on websites and forums frequented by auto enthusiasts and collectors of high-end sports cars.

Sookralli was a trusted employee of the company for about 10 years, Champion Porsche said in a lawsuit filed earlier this month. During that time, he earned commissions selling Porsches to “clientele which he developed” and had access to the company’s sales records, the suit said.

What Champion Porsche didn’t know, according to the company, was that Sookralli and a partner, Devika Budhram, had started their own Porsche side business called Champion Autosport, which involved receiving “deposits of monies for vehicles.”

At some point, Sookralli — who has 10 children — developed “serious financial troubles through the payment of child support and money judgments against him,” which led to a wage garnishment by American Express, the suit said.

The suit says Sookralli developed a scheme that involved presenting customers with fraudulent buyer deposit agreements that deceived them into believing they were purchasing a vehicle from Champion Porsche that did not exist, and that Sookralli did not order through the dealership.

According to the website Thedrive.com, Porsche

buyers are accustomed to having to pay deposits months or even years in advance for limited-run vehicles like the 911 GT3 and GT3 RS.

According to the suit, “Shiraaz, knowingly and intentionally, concealed these fraudulent buyer deposit agreements from [the dealership] and failed to follow any of the [company’s] well established procedures related to the sale of Porsche vehicles.”

He also directed purchasers to transfer deposits for the non-existent vehicles directly into a Champion Autosport account he had created, the suit said.

Contacted through an internet forum site popular among Porsche enthusiasts, one of the victims, Robert Allen, said via email that he had no reason to question Sookralli’s credibility when told to send the money to a bank account the dealership says Sookralli created without its knowledge.

“I had no reason to question where the wire was being sent because the information was being provided by Champion’s vice president using [the dealership’s] business email and signed with [its] business logo and information,” Allen said. “Even after a site visit everything appeared to be authentic.”

The dealership, which calls itself the nation’s largest Porsche dealership, became aware of the scheme in early September and contacted Sookralli by email, according to a Sept. 7 injunction request by the dealership to freeze the Champion Autosport bank account.

“Shiraaz, via email, communicated with the [dealership], and identified 24 transactions,” the request said, adding he admitted to receiving $2,560,198.

The injunction request freezing the bank account was granted on Sept. 11, and the court has ordered Sookralli’s bank to provide Champion Porsche with records of all transaction since 2010, court records show.

Roy Diaz, attorney for the Porsche dealership, and dealership general manager Tony Sciple said Tuesday they haven’t yet been given access to the transaction information.

Sciple said the dealership has not yet learned whether the $2.6 million is still in the account but expects to know within a couple of days. He said he fears the worst because Sookralli “skipped town a week prior to all of his customers starting to call looking for their cars.” The Broward County Sheriff’s Office is looking into the matter as well, Diaz said.

Sciple said the dealership plans to pay Sookralli’s customers “out of our own pocket” as soon as possible while it pursues restitution from its former vice president through the legal system.

“It’s our reputation here, and we’re trying to do things the right way,” Sciple said.