St. Louis man sentenced in $1.7M car-buying check fraud scheme

Yahoo

26-03-2025

BENTON, Ill. – A St. Louis man convicted of using fake checks in a vehicle sale scheme was sentenced Wednesday in Illinois federal court.
Prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Illinois said Valentino Colic, 34, was named in an 11-count indictment in November 2023 with co-defendants Alen Saric, Emad Hasanbegovic, and Almir Palic, all of whom lived in St. Louis.
According to court documents, the four men participated in a scheme to defraud people attempting to sell their vehicles on Facebook and Craigslist from 2018 until August 2023. They reportedly used fake cashier's checks to acquire the vehicles. The checks were printed on security-enhanced check paper with the names and logos of real banks with fake routing numbers.
Once the men purchased a vehicle, they would then resell the vehicle to another person for cash before the original victim could try to cash the check, only to realize it was bogus.
The indictment alleges that Colic, Saric, Hasanbegovic, and Palic used the names of prior victims to buy and sell the vehicles and to complete documents such as titles and bills of sale. When posing as the victims, they often used the victims' photo IDs.
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All told, the men acquired vehicles from victims in Madison, Jasper, Bond, and Fayette counties in Illinois, and issued at least $1,710,999 in fake cashier's checks. They bought and resold vehicles from more than 100 victims across five states, prosecutors said.
Colic pleaded guilty in September 2024 to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, two counts of wire fraud, two counts of interstate transportation of property taken by fraud, and six counts of aggravated identity theft. A U.S. District Court judge sentenced Colic to 145 months in federal prison.
Saric, 36, pleaded guilty in January to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, one count of interstate transportation of property taken by fraud, and one count of aggravated identity theft. He'll be sentenced on May 7.
Hasanbegovic, 34, faces one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and one count of identity theft. He has a hearing scheduled for May.
Palic, 25, was sentenced in February to 51 months in federal prison.
To avoid situations like this, the FBI warns people not to assume checks are genuine when received from people they previously didn't know. The Federal Trade Commission also offers advice on how to avoid and report such instances.
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