A man who managed to trick Tesla into giving him car after car for free has been sentenced to four years in prison for fraud.
This wild story first hit our radar in 2019 when we reported on the remains of a burned Tesla Model X spotted on a frozen Lake Champlain in Vermont – pictured above.
At this point, there was no information about how the electric vehicle ended up on the frozen lake.
It took another two years before we learned the man behind this strange sight.
In 2021, we reported that the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Vermont opened a case against Michael A. Gonzalez, a 32-year-old man from Colchester, Vermont.
When the vehicle was first discovered, our leading theory was insurance fraud.
According to the indictment, this theory turned out to be correct, but the backstory is much crazier than we expected.
The United States Secret Service and the Vermont Department of Motor Vehicles revealed that Gonzalez exploited Tesla’s purchasing system to purchase and take possession of vehicles without facilitating final payment.
He would then sell the vehicles online to used dealers or private individuals.
In the indictment they wrote:
“According to the indictment filed in the case, between September 2018 and January 2021, Gonzalez purchased five Tesla vehicles with a total value of approximately $607,000 from dealers in New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts and Florida. For each vehicle, Gonzalez made an initial payment of approximately $2,500 and then initiated electronic transfers to pay the remainder of the vehicle’s price from accounts with insufficient funds or from fictitious accounts. Gonzalez took delivery of the vehicles from Tesla before Tesla discovered he had not made final payments. Gonzalez resold or attempted to resell four of the five vehicles.”
The Model X found burned on the frozen lake was the fifth and final Tesla vehicle that was part of Gonzalez’s plan.
He reportedly couldn’t sell the vehicle and decided to burn it down and file a fraudulent insurance claim instead.
Today, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Vermont announced that Gonzalez was sentenced to four years in prison:
The United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Vermont announced that on October 11, 2023, Michael Gonzalez, 34, of Shelburne, Vermont, was sentenced by Chief United States District Judge Geoffrey Crawford to a term of 48 months in prison followed by a three-year release under the supervision. Gonzalez previously pleaded guilty to five counts of possessing and disposing of stolen vehicles that crossed state lines.
This ends the saga of the burned Model X on a frozen lake in Vermont.
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