Red Rock elevates former owner, who presided over frauds and arrests, to General Manager over all five dealerships

In February, 2024, the sole local owner of Red Rock Auto dealerships, Bryan Knight, was removed from the Auto Industry Division’s list of owners of the business. The change came about after two years of customers and former employees  speaking up about the questionable business practices the dealerships were found to be using under Knight’s ownership. Yet despite Knight getting booted as an owner, he was reportedly still present and working at the dealerships. So with all that has been revealed about how Red Rock was operating in Grand Junction to the detriment of the community, why would the other owners of Red Rock Auto decide to push Knight out, only to keep him around with a hand in the business?

New information explains why.

An anonymous source contacted AnneLandmanBlog to explain what has been going on.

The source says that while Knight was indeed removed as an owner of Red Rock Auto, he wasn’t pushed out of the business at all. Instead, members of the Dahle family of Salt Lake City — the other owners of Red Rock Auto — elevated Knight to General Manager (GM) over all five Grand Junction Red Rock dealerships and made sure Knight would keep getting paid the same amount he earned while he was still an owner.  At the same time, the Dahles demoted the existing General Managers over the five stores to General Sales Managers (GSMs) and cut each of their pay by $12,000/year. The five former GMs were given only a day’s notice of the change, along with a stark choice: either agree to the demotion and take the reduced pay for a year, possibly more, and stay on with the company, or “walk out the door and not come back.”

The GMs who agreed to be demoted and take the pay cut were ordered not to talk about it or make any changes to their employment titles or status on their social media accounts. Red Rock has not made any public statements about Knight being removed an owner, or revealed publicly that they elevated him to GM over all five dealerships. In fact, a “Contact the Owner” button on Red Rock Nissan’s website still opens to an email composition screen addressed to Bryan Knight, as though he was still an owner.

At around the time all this happened, the source says, Knight took a trip out of the country, adding, “I’m guessing this was to put his owner shares in an offshore account until the whole Red Rock [situation] ‘smooths over.'”

The changes were reportedly made to address mounting legal troubles.

The Colorado state Attorney General has been investigating Red Rock Auto for more than a year now. A criminal investigator from the AG’s office made multiple trips to the western slope and interviewed over a dozen Red Rock victims, has put together a case and submitted the findings to the Colorado Attorney General’s Office.

In addition, in August of 2023, Grand Junction Police arrested (pdf) two Red Rock GMC financial managers, Tiffany Miller and Matthew Morris, and charged them with felony forgery, criminal impersonation and identity theft. The two allegedly committed the crimes in the course of selling a vehicle to a couple, Mia Bozof and William Burton III. According to the arrest affidavit, Miller and Morris fraudulently posed as Bozof and Burton in a phone call to the Canvas Credit Union, using the couple’s personal financial information to gain access to information about the status of their loan application. The credit union also reported a potential forgery on the loan application Miller and Morris had submitted for the sale of a vehicle to Bozof and Burton. After their arrest, Miller and Morris told law enforcement that Red Rock GMC General Manager Tyson Chambers and Sales Manager Caleb Stillman not only knew about their fraudulent activities, but had encouraged them. Morris told investigators that in the few months he worked for Red Rock, it was common practice to make such calls, that he had made 3-4 of them total, and he had felt pressured to make them. Morris told law enforcement he was terminated from Red Rock “not for making the call, but for being caught.”

Also, in January of 2023, another local couple, Jessie McNeely and Eric Girten, sued Red Rock Auto over fraudulent practices allegedly perpetrated on them in the course of buying a vehicle at Red Rock Hyundai (pdf): the couple said a Red Rock Hyundai salesperson told them to sign a blank IPad screen without showing them any actual documents. The couple discovered “someone at Red Rock” had created fake XCel Energy and AT&T bills in their names and submitted them to lenders with their credit application. Red Rock also added a $579 “documentation fee” to their contract that the couple didn’t agree to, and made nine unauthorized “hard pulls” on Ms. McNeely’s credit that damaged her credit, her ability to get financing on another vehicle and her ability to even use her credit at all. Red Rock also charged her 21% interest on a loan without consulting her. The lawsuit charged Red Rock with “unconscionable actions” under Colorado’s Uniform Consumer Credit Code, two counts of fraud, civil theft and breach of contract. McNeely and Girten demanded a jury trial and sought over $100,000 in damages, exclusive of attorney’s fees.

The suit was settled for an unknown amount. The full text of the complaint is available online. The suit was brought by Denver attorney Eric R. Coakley.

Bryan Knight and Red Rock Auto are also currently facing yet another lawsuit, this time brought by a former employee, Derek Paiz (pdf), for breach of contract, unjust enrichment and other claims. Mr. Paiz says Red Rock failed to pay him most of the wages he earned while he was employed with them as a detailer. At first, Mr. Paiz filed his lawsuit pro se (by himself) in late 2023, but in March, 2024, the Denver law firm of Whitcomb Selinsky, P.C. took up Mr. Paiz’s lawsuit, and now, in addition to the allegedly withheld wages, Mr. Paiz is seeking financial compensation from Red Rock for emotional distress, harassment, inconvenience and anxiety, and compensatory and punitive damages. The suit could now potentially mushroom into something much more expensive for Red Rock than when Mr. Paiz first filed it late last year.

Tough times at Red Rock

Amid the lawsuits, investigations and arrests of their financial managers, business is reportedly down at all of the Red Rock stores except Honda, which is selling about 3-6 cars per day and is the only store still making any money, according to the source. The chain is currently suffering a loss of “at least $80,000 to $100,000 a month PER store,” says the source, who added that “lots of employees have been quitting” and Red Rock salespeople “are barely even making $5,000 a month. They can barely even feed their kids right now.” Also, a year and a half ago Red Rock had planned to demolish the old Ashley Furniture/former church building next to the GM dealership and across the street from the Honda store, and build a new Kia dealership on the lot, but now Red Rock lacks the money for the project because of “everything that’s been happening.”

Despite everything that’s happened in the last two years, it appears customers are still having problems with the dealerships.

Despite advertising blitzes, local sponsorships, and purported efforts to shape up, Grand Junction’s Red Rock dealerships are still getting some negative reviews that reflect the same types of problems customers have along had, and apparently still have with the businesses:

 

 

 

Only time will tell what is in store for Grand Junction’s Red Rock dealerships, but it’s unlikely that elevating the former owner, under whose watch so much fraudulent activity has taken place, is going to make the chain any more popular with their local customer base.