Subpoena related to a 2022 transaction at Red Rock Hyundai in which allegedly forged signatures were discovered by a credit union on purchase documents for a used 2020 GMC Sierra truck. Mr. Acevedo, the customer who tried to buy the vehicle, was the victim in the case.
Jesus Acevedo, the victim of the alleged 2022 forgeries in the case, received a subpoena dated 8/29/2024 in the state’s case.
In January, 2022 Mr. Acevedo attempted to buy a 2020 GMC Sierra pickup from Red Rock Hyundai. He was never shown any of the documents from his purchase while he was at the Hyundai dealership. He saw them for the first time at the Sooper Credit Union, where he went to arrange financing. A loan officer printed out the documents from the sale and saw four signatures that didn’t look like Mr. Acevedo’s signature. He showed the signatures to Mr. Acevedo, who affirmed they were not his. One of the questionable signatures was on an agreement to buy a $10,000 extended warranty that Mr. Acevedo wasn’t told about and did not approve.
Cover of the new “Grand Junction Lifestyle” magazine recently distributed through the USPS mail
Yesterday’s mail brought a glossy new promotional magazine called “Grand Junction Lifestyle.” Given the cute kid and baby animal pictured on the cover, one would hope the lifestyle they’re trying to promote would be a healthy one. But instead, upon opening the front cover, readers are served up a two-page ad promoting one of the biggest corporate criminals and polluters on Earth, the Chevron Corporation:
Did you buy a vehicle from a local dealership only to find out later you were defrauded in some way? Can’t afford an attorney to help?
Fortunately, there’s another, completely unpublicized way car buyers can get compensation for a fraudulent deal committed by a dealership.
Surety bonds
Colorado law requires every licensed motor vehicle dealer to carry a surety bond. The bond is meant to protect customers from fraudulent business practices.
A surety bond guarantees financial compensation to customers who incur monetary loss as a result of an auto dealer’s fraud, negligence or failure to comply with all of Colorado’s laws and ethical guidelines that govern the sale of vehicles. In order to get a dealer’s license from the state, all dealerships must purchase a surety bond to the amount of $50,000. Individual salespeople must also be bonded, to the amount of $15,000.
If you have evidence that a dealership committed fraud in your deal, for example if you found forged signatures on contracts or agreements, found extra charges were added were to your contract without your knowledge, the dealership submitted false information about your finances and the vehicle you were buying to lenders on your credit application (like inflating your gross salary or the length of time you’ve lived at your current residence, or claimed to lenders that your vehicle has fancier features like leather seats and a sunroof when it doesn’t), or if you were charged a higher interest rate than expected on your loan without your knowing, or if you were charged a higher price than the advertised price, or if the dealer told you had to buy additional products in order to buy the vehicle you wanted, or if the dealership submitted fake utility bills in your name to lenders, you can make a claim against the dealership’s surety bond to recoup the loss you incurred from the fraud.
Above is an excerpt from a 2023 lawsuit (pdf) brought by a Grand Junction couple against Red Rock Auto/Red Rock Hyundai describing how they discovered Red Rock Hyundai had fabricated XCel and AT&T bills in their names to include with the credit application for a loan on their vehicle. Neither one of the couple has an AT&T account.
How to file a claim against a dealership’s surety bond:
1) Identify the insurer that sold the dealer the bond**,
2) Contact the insurer and ask them to tell you their procedure for filing a claim,
3) Gather evidence of the fraud, for example the documents from your sale, your credit application, dates and times the fraud happened, the names of employees involved, copies of your signature if you think your signature was forged, a full description of what happened, the amount of money you are out because of the deal and the basis for the figure, and submit it all to the insurer with a letter saying “Dealership [fill in name]” defrauded you and you want to make a claim against the dealership’s surety bond.
The insurer will investigate your claim and pay you after they verify the facts of the case.
**How do you find out which insurer holds a dealership’s surety bond?
It’s public information that’s buried on the Auto Industry Division’s website. Here’s how to find it:
Scroll down to the blue “Quick Links” bar and click on it for the drop-down menu.
Click on the link for”Active Facility License Listings.”
In the bulleted sentence right below the page title, click on the blue link for “Active License Lookup.”
In the Active License Lookup web form, click the blue link in the third bulleted sentence that says “Click here to search for a facility instead of a person.”
In the facility search form, type the name of the dealership. [Hint: For the best result, use broad search criteria. For example, if you’re looking for Red Rock Nissan, just type “Red Rock.” If you’re looking for Grand Valley Auto, just type “Grand Valley.”]
Mug shot of Tiffany Momilani Miller, former Red Rock GMC financial manager, who was arrested for forgery, criminal impersonation and identity theft last year
In the search result box, click on the blue name of the dealership.
Scroll down to the dealership’s “License Bond Information.” You’ll see the name of the company that holds the bond for the dealership, and the bond number, which is like an insurance policy number.
Put the name of the bond issuing company into a Google search to get the company’s contact information. Call the company and ask them to tell you their process to file a claim against a dealership’s surety bond.
Above is the page on the Colorado Department of Revenue’s Auto Industry website with the surety bond information for Red Rock Hyundai, naming the bond company and the bond number.
Surety bonds protect customers from financial losses they incur from doing business with an unscrupulous auto dealer. It’s free to file a claim against a dealer’s surety bond, so if you were defrauded in the course of buying a car, file a claim to get compensation for the fraudulent deal. The bond company will pay you and then seek reimbursement from the dealer.
Also…Report the fraud to law enforcement
Dealers that use fraudulent practices will continue doing so until they get caught and sent to jail, because they make a lot of money off such crimes.
dealership inside city limits, fill out the G.J.P.D.’s financial fraud packet, file it with the G.J.P.D., meet with a cop to explain how you were defrauded, and include a copy of your fraud packet with the documents you send to the surety bond company.
You can also report the crime to the Colorado state Attorney General as an automotive complaint and write reviews on sites like Google Reviews, Yelp, Cars.com, the Better Business Bureau, etc.
The more records you make of the crime and the more such crimes get reported, the better off everyone will be, and the easier it will be to make a solid case to the surety bond provider so you can get your money back. And it’s free to do all of this, except for the time it takes to do it.
Note that all of the crimes in the following video have been committed locally by a notorious auto dealer that has five stores in Grand Junction, so it pays to know how to make a claim against a dealer’s surety bond to get compensation for a financial rip off:
Banner from Tina’s new web page, “Free Tina Peters”
Tina Peters has a new website, FreeTina.com, that she’s not just using to continue to solicit donations for her legal defense, but also to organize what she hopes will be a massive show of support before and during her criminal trial, scheduled for July 29 – August 12 at the Mesa County Justice Center.
Tina faces a mix of 10 felony and misdemeanor charges, including three counts of attempting to influence a public servant, conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, identity theft, first degree official misconduct, violation of duty and failure to comply with requirements of the Secretary of State. She could be sentenced to prison if convicted.
Tina is using the website to recruit people around the country to lead “Virtual Daily Prayer” sessions for her and she is organizing “in-person Jericho walks” around Grand Junction. She posts a call-in phone number where people can “dial in to listen or add a prayer.”
Local baseball fans will now be confronted with the name of “Red Rock Auto” at every turn in their Jackalopes game day experience. As part of the sponsorship deal, the Diamond Club at Suplizio Field will now “officially be renamed the “Red Rock Auto Diamond Club,” and fans will now enter Suplizio Field through gates re-named the “Red Rock Auto North Gate” or the “Red Rock Auto South Gate.” The grill is even named the “Red Rock Auto Grill.”
Janet Rowland’s March 28 Instagram post touting her devotion to “the truth.”
County Commissioner Janet Rowland (R), in a campaign plug she posted March 28 on her VoteJanetRowland Instagram page, says she “will always fight for the truth, even when the media presents the facts in a way that distorts the truth.”
But even as Janet denigrates the local media as untruthful, we must remember an episode in 2007 when Janet deceived the public herself by using local media.
Making it worse is the fact that even after it was exposed, she’s never taken responsibility for it, or apologized for it.
Shortly after losing statewide election for lieutenant governor as Bob Beauprez’s running mate in 2006, while she was previously Mesa County Commissioner, Janet was a columnist for the Grand Junction Free Press, at the time a competing newspaper to the Daily Sentinel. She wrote several columns for the Free Press under her own name until one day a sharp reader spotted the fact that Janet had been lifting the text of her columns word for word from government pamphlets, and brought this to the attention of the Free Press’s editor.
Tina Peters “Patriot Whistleblower Truth Teller” dog hoodie
Tina Peters has wasted no time in taking advantage of the most recent delays in her criminal and civil trials to milk her status as a darling of the Trump Party and rake in more money. She has started broadening her appeal to the MAGA crowd by praising people convicted of participating in the deadly January 6 insurrection, lovingly referring to them as “our J6ers.” She condemns “the military-age men who are coming across our border with debit cards and buying $5,000 worth of new clothes” “and saying in no uncertain terms “… we need an authoritarian in office.”
While she repeatedly insists in her videos that she hasn’t profited from anything she’s done, Tina has also quickly rolled out a huge line of Tina Peters-as-Hero themed promotional gear for sale through her website, including T-shirts, sweatshirts, “Patriot-Whistleblower-Truth Teller Tina Peters” greeting cards (pack of 5 for $25), aluminum Tina Peters-themed vanity license plates with her website on it ($14.85), Tina Peters Sherpa Fleece Blankets ($70.40 – $97.70), “I stand with Tina Peters” scented candles ($38.10), dog hoodies ($37.35), backpacks and whiskey glasses,
Swelling clay soils can triple their volume when they get wet, causing them to exert tremendous force on a home’s foundation, and hence damage, if no measures are taken to mitigate the potential damage. Clay soils are very common across Mesa County. [Click photo to enlarge for better view.] (Photo: Colorado Geological Survey)
The geotechnical soils investigation (pdf) done on a building lot on Horseshoe Drive in Fruita where Mesa County Commissioner Cody Davis and his construction company, Chronos Builders, built a spec home in 2015-2016 stated clearly that expansive clay soils were present on the site and that “Based upon our experience with the Mancos shale in the vicinity of the site, the shale is anticipated to be slightly to moderately expansive.”
Michael A. Berry, the professional engineer who authored the report, recommended three types of foundations that would better protect the structure from “heave related movements” than a typical shallow foundation, but also admitted such foundations are “usually cost prohibitive.”
On December 12, 2023, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) finalized the Combating Auto Retail Scams rule (CARS) to end the most common abuses that dealerships like Red Rock Auto in Grand Junction have long perpetrated on customers when selling cars. The CARS Rule was scheduled to go into effect on July 30, 2024. [See above last minute update].
Frame from a TV ad by a local agency that sells Medicare Advantage plans
At this time of year, ads hawking “Medicare Advantage” plans flood every possible media outlet, imploring seniors to call 1-800 numbers and contact their local insurance brokers for “free Medicare evaluations” where brokers can sign them up for Medicare Advantage (MA) plans, also called Part C plans, that offer premiums a bit lower than traditional Medicare and freebies like vision screenings, dental cleanings, gym memberships and a monthly allowance to spend on drugstore merchandise.
These plans definitely sound alluring, but don’t be fooled.
Tina Peters in a November 2, 2023 video posted on YouTube
Tina Peters filed a lawsuit (pdf) November 8 against Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold to overturn the $15,400 campaign finance violation fine an administrative law judge levied against her on October 4, 2023, claiming the fine is “unfair” and that it has “irreparably injured” her.
The Court fined her for soliciting donations to run for re-election as Mesa County Clerk in 2021-2022 without having first filed the necessary paperwork with the state that requires she report the money she raised and spent on her campaign. The fine pertained to Tina’s campaign for County Clerk that she dropped out of in 2022 to run for Colorado Secretary of State instead. Tina lost the primary election for that seat to her Republican competitor by 14 percentage points, but she is telling people in interviews that she won that election.
On September 29, Colorado Administrative Law Judge Timothy Nemecheck fined former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters $15,400 for illegally soliciting and accepting contributions to a 2022 re-election campaign for county clerk without first registering as a candidate with the State.
The fine was the end result of two campaign finance complaints filed in 2021 by Scott Beilfuss, who is now a Grand Junction City Councilman. The first complaint was dated August 16, 2021. Beilfuss wrote a single sentence:
“Tina Peters flew up to Mr. Pillows cybersymposium on a private plane provided to her and is staying as a guest of the Pillow foundation in a clear violation of accepting gift laws.”
Marshall Zelinger of 9News’ Next with Kyle Clark reported on Friday, October 6, 2023 that an administrative law judge has fined Republican former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters $15,400 for soliciting donations to run for re-election as Mesa County Clerk without having first filed the necessary paperwork with the state that requires she report all the money she raised and spent on her campaign. The $15.4k fine pertains to Tina’s campaign for Clerk that she dropped out of in 2022 to run for Colorado Secretary of State instead.
In the above interview posted on Rumble.com on 9/18/23 for the Clay Clark ReAwaken America tour, Tina Peters lies and tells viewers she won the 2020 election for Colorado Secretary of State. “The Reawaken America tour is a series of controversial far-right conferences held across the United States featuring prominent QAnon influencers, anti-vaxx activists, election fraud conspiracy theorists, Christian pastors, political candidates and elected officials,” according to the Anti-Defamation League.
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Indicted former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters has filed to run for Secretary of State in Colorado in 2026, and as of July 23, 2023 had almost $305,000 in the bank for her campaign, according to Colorado Tracer, the online campaign finance reporting system.
Tina has not publicly stated she has an active campaign for Colorado Secretary of State in 2026, but that has not stopped her from listing campaign expenses for it.
But filing to run for SOS in 2026 looks more like it may be a tactic Tina is using to defray her personal costs of being a darling of the election denier cult while she awaits her criminal trial next February.
Note that “Bookcliffs Investment Group, LLC” is not be confused with “Bookcliffs Financial Planning and Investments,” which is an entirely different company unaffiliated with Reade and Adams’ business.
A former employee of Red Rock Hyundai in Grand Junction who quit as an act of conscience last year previously gave an interview in which he told how Red Rock financing and insurance (F&I) employees had been fleecing people and submitting false information to financial institutions on the sales side. The same person also worked in the service department at Red Rock Hyundai, so I contacted him again to talk about how service is billed at these dealerships. The conversation ranged into a discussion of other service practices as well.
The former employee revealed some disturbing practices he’d witnessed in the service department at Red Rock Hyundai. These, combined with what he had seen happening on the sales side weighed heavily on his conscience and led up to his resignation. Some of what he said he had seen included:
This editorial from the Thursday, Sept. 21, 2023 issue of the Daily Sentinel is reprinted here with permission from the publisher. The original editorial is on the Sentinel’s website here. The added graphics are AnneLandmanBlog’s own embellishments.
By violating Colorado’s 2008 Public Health Act, Mesa County Commissioner Janet Rowland has captured the Board of Public Health and put herself in a position to push her personal religious views and political whims onto the agency
Mesa County commissioners would like their constituents to believe they are “by the book” policy makers.
But they’re willing to toss the book out the window if it interferes with their fever to micromanage Mesa County Public Health.
The latest twist in the commissioners’ slow, indelicate and legally questionable takeover of the public health board is that commissioners now control the agenda of what is supposed to be an independent body.
Pretty slick. Commissioners did it with the full cooperation of a new health board it installed after the old one resigned en masse when it became clear commissioners intended to revoke their appointments for not acquiescing to the commissioners’ demand to fire MCPH Executive Director Dr. Jeff Kuhr.
Jesus Acevedo, the victim of the alleged 2022 forgeries in the case, received a subpoena dated 8/29/2024 in the state’s case.
