Fake cars, fraudulent car loans
In late 2023, poker player George Janssen turned up on the side of the road with his hands bound in his hometown of Bad Axe, Michigan after having been missing for a month. Allegedly kidnapped as a part of an extortion scheme, it was an odd story to say the least. And now it is looking more and more like a hoax to cover upon Janssen’s own crimes.
Janssen was arrested on Wednesday, accused by federal prosecutors of defrauding at least 20 banks out of almost $3.3 million shortly before he disappeared.
The federal complaint, filed in Bay City, Michigan, and obtained by The Independent, the Michigan Department of State Office of Investigative Services initiated an audit of Janssen’s car dealership, Bay Auto Brokers, after an August 2023 complaint about a possible fraudulent car loan.
The audit uncovered that Janssen used fake vehicles in multiple car loans and on October 30, 2023, he was stripped of his sales license for five years.
Withdrew cash in a hurry
During October and early November 2023, Janssen pulled close to $75,000 from ATMs and wrote himself $44,000 in checks from the dealership, all while telling people he was being extorted by a “Hispanic gang or cartel” and had already paid them $2 million.
In early November, a credit union contacted the FBI and said Janssen had deposited $1.4 million worth of checks and then wrote himself $1.3 million in checks from the deposited funds. The ones he had deposited then bounced. He disappeared just days later.
The federal complaint says at least 20 banks “were identified to have been targets of fraudulent vehicle loans between June of 2016 and October 30, 2023” to the tune of $3,289,834.
Was the kidnapping real?
Janssen originally vanished on November 13, 2023. A family member called the police, saying Janssen was “in trouble,” and a friend found Janssen’s abandoned car with a couple $50 bills on the floor.
According to the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office, Janssen told a friend that he was held up at gunpoint while sitting in his car at a Detroit casino after a poker tournament and told to hand over $2 million. The story went on to say that Janssen was then directed to a nearby parking lot, where masked men gave him a cell phone.
From the next two years, an anonymous voice would allegedly call Janssen on that phone and direct him to a money drop. They would threaten him and his family if he did not meet their demands. Janssen allegedly got to the point where he had no more money to give, which is when he was supposedly kidnapped.
On December 15, the day before Janssen was found on the side of the road back in Bad Axe, a family member showed police a coded letter from Janssen that capitalized specific letters to spell out the word “KIDNAP.”
The federal complaint does not specifically accuse Janssen of having made up the entire extortion and kidnapping story. It does accuse him of financial crimes, though, which shed doubt on his original tale.
Image credit: Pexels.com
The post Poker Player Who Was Allegedly Kidnapped in 2023 Arrested, Accused of Bank Fraud appeared first on Poker News Daily.
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