Bryan Knight, the now former part-owner of Red Rock Auto dealerships
The sole local owner of the Red Rock Auto dealership chain, Bryan Knight, has been pushed out of the company.
Documents from the Colorado Department of Revenue show Mr. Knight, who oversaw the Red Rock dealerships and had long been listed as a partner and minority owner of the Red Rock GMC and Honda stores, is no longer an owner of record for any Red Rock stores.
The rumor that Mr. Knight had been pushed out of Red Rock Auto came on January 19, when someone in the local auto industry contacted AnneLandmanBlog to say “Bryan Knight no longer works at Red Rock.”
Rumor: In a reversal, Red Rock got fleeced by a customer
The rumor was that Mr. Knight had done a deal at Red Rock Nissan in which he had accepted a fake ID, social security number and fraudulent financial information from a customer, who then drove off in a Mercedes Benz valued at $60,000. Word was Mr. Knight failed to follow the steps needed to verify the customer’s identity and the legitimacy of his financial information before relinquishing the car.
A inquiry to local law enforcement on 1/21 to try to verify this story revealed no report of vehicle theft or financial fraud had been made to the Grand Junction Police Department by Red Rock Nissan, which made the rumor hard to verify.
In addition, an open records request to the Colorado Auto Industry Division on 1/30/24 asking for ownership records of Red Rock Auto stores showed Bryan Knight was still listed as a partner and corporate owner of Red Rock’s GMC and Honda stores at that time:
Bryan Knight was still listed as a corporate owner of Red Rock Honda on 1/30/24 in this information received from the Colorado Auto Industry Division in early February in response to an open records request.
But a recent re-check of ownership records for Red Rock Honda done on February 21, 2024 showed Bryan Knight is, in fact, no longer an owner:
Screenshot taken on 2/21/2024.
Similarly, Mr. Knight was previously listed as an owner and partner in Red Rock GMC in late January, and is now no longer listed as an owner:
The Auto Industry Division said there had been no changes to ownership of these dealerships in the last three years.
Bryan Knight is no longer listed as an owner of Red Rock GMC as of 2/21/2024:
Bryan Knight is no longer a listed owner of Red Rock GMC in this screenshot taken 2/21/2024
Starting in late 2022, Knight was the person that Red Rock customers would call when they discovered they had been charged thousands of dollars on their purchase contracts for unwanted extras like “Worry Free” maintenance, “Worry Free gas,” Drive-Pur detail packages, Resistall coatings and extended warranties, or if customers found forged signatures on their contracts or that the dealership had submitted false information to their lenders about their gross income, housing payments, features of their vehicles, etc.
Bryan Knight (second from left, in white shirt).
Such tactics were apparently in use for years under Mr. Knight’s management of Red Rock dealerships.
After awareness of these tactics was raised among local citizens, banks and credit unions, the lenders in particular started scrutinizing Red Rock deals more closely and in August, 2023, after the Canvas Credit union alerted law enforcement to improprieties found in one deal, two Red Rock GMC financial managers, Tiffany Miller and Matthew Morris, were arrested on charges of forgery, criminal impersonation and identity theft, an event that vindicated many local customers’ assertions that these dealerships had been engaging in fraudulent sales and financing tactics. In the arrest affidavit (pdf), both GMC employees implicated upper management at Red Rock for sanctioning and encouraging their illegal behavior. Tiffany Miller said the practices she engaged in were “essentially encouraged” by Red Rock GMC Manager Tyson Chambers and Sales Manager Caleb Stillman.
Tim Dahle, namesake of the Tim Dahle dealerships in Utah. The Dahle family owns Red Rock dealerships in G.J.
Morris told law enforcement that he and Miller weren’t fired for engaging in these fraudulent tactics but “for being caught” doing them. These tactics illicitly bilked an untold number of unsuspecting customers out of thousands of dollars in extra charges over the 8 years the company had been operating in Grand Junction, turbo-charging Red Rock’s growth, as indicated by the chain’s extraordinarily rapid expansion from a single dealership in 2016 to five dealerships by 2022.
Red Rock Auto is a corporate offshoot of the Tim Dahle dealerships around Salt Lake City, Utah. With Mr. Knight now gone, Red Rock is now owned by Tim Dahle’s sons, Steven and Marcus Dahle, daughter Lindsay Ream, Lindsay’s husband Victor (“Vic”) Ream, Robert M. Dahle (a trustee of what looks like several family-related trusts) and a minority partner named Otis Tyler Slade, all of Utah.
Perhaps the most telling part of all this is that it wasn’t the financial frauds that Red Rock perpetrated on customers for years, nor the dire financial hardship these dealerships inflicted on so many Red Rock customers, nor was it the arrest of the Red Rock GMC financial managers on felony charges, nor was it the suggestion that upper management had actually sanctioned and encouraged illegal behavior that made the other owners of Red Rock decide to push Bryan Knight out, but rather it was the loss of a $60,000 Mercedes that proved just too much for the Dahle family to bear before they took concerted action to end their relationship with Bryan Knight.
That says something about the company and the culture of those leading it.
This is FALSE! Your reporting is beyond inaccurate. Nice try though.
Okay, then tell us why Bryan Knight is no longer listed as a part owner in the publicly available records?
The 2 screen shots are not legit. Two completely different pictures and layout. It’s also outdated. I also know everything is good business as usual. Your reporting false information.
All screen shots are 100% authentic. Two were obtained directly from the Auto Industry Division through a CORA request made in early Feb for the last 3 years of ownership information for all Red Rock dealerships. The other two were more current info taken from the Auto industry Division’s website. I’m open to any additional information you would like to offer about the reason for the change in ownership, and exactly what situation led to it.
Keep believing your lies.
Please enlighten us as to exactly what is not true, tell what you believe is true and offer supporting evidence for it, if you have that information.
What parts are false?
Who has two thumbs and is sick of these Red Rock Auto stories? This guy!
Anne, this horse was beat to death (by you) a long time ago. Move on! It’s well past the point of interesting and is now just vindictive.
To the contrary, this is a momentous change, since the improprieties and illegal actions people have reported and submitted complaints about to the Auto Industry Division and Attorney General and this blog all happened under Bryan Knight’s ownership/management.
Vindictive is good! Vindictive is very good! The very nature of vindictiveness is to ‘right’ that which is, in your opine, ‘wrong’! This is an on-going saga. Which, to date, has not reached it’s full ‘End of Story’… Yes, Mr. Guy it looks like you will have to swallow several more editorial bites before it is ‘put to bed’! Just as I will have to endure the likes of a certain 4th district candidate! Who, every-other day shows up on the front page of my morning news! Better still, as an adolescent making-out in front of a security camera while on a date at a well known theater!
What’s my point? You might ask! Just this; You can read: “For sale; Baby Shoes, Never Worn! and the novel “In Search of Lost Time”. Short vs Long! You will, because you picked them up and you want to know the ending!
As you continue to read the on-going ‘Red Rocks’ saga, you never know, you might just find a small crumb of information that you weren’t aware of!
Dude. Let me guess you work for or are affiliated with this unethical and sleazy organization. What I can tell the regulators in colorado (including the attorney general’s office) are a joke. Indeed one of the regulators is now a red rock employee. I guess that’s one way to silence things, buy people off. I had the misfortune of buying a car by a now red rock owned organization. The difference is night and day. I want to wash the sleaze off of me leaving red rock.
Thank you!! Anne is an atheist so she in into beating dead horses.
It is interesting how many “random” folks come here to complain about your story! This is an incredible piece, and should be “beat to death” because guess what, people are being scammed and this group needs to be called out. Certainly seems like all these anonymous posts are recruits from Red Rocks! Keep up the reporting – this is great!
Seems pretty common in Utah where these Red Rock dealers are owned. Checked on complaints about Dahle and Larry Miller there and same problems with bait and switch and pushing cars on people who can’t afford them. These chains come into town and ruin the local market. I think only two GJ dealers are locally owned and better prices can be found in other places. Probably best to buy cars and trucks on the Front Range.