A Philadelphia used car salesman has been sentenced to prison after stealing millions of dollars from customers who were looking to buy wheelchair-accessible vehicles. Edward Scott Rock, 50, of Philadelphia, was charged by indictment in December 2023 and pleaded guilty to one count of mail frau d and one count of wire fraud in October of last year, the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of Pennsylvania, said. According to court filings, between 2019 and 2023, Rock, a used car salesman in Northeast Philadelphia, advertised and accepted payment for wheelchair-accessible vehicles but never delivered them to dozens of unsuspecting customers. He repeatedly lied to clients, forged Americans with Disabilities Act compliance letters, fabricated excuses for non-delivery, sold the same vehicle to multiple buyers, accepted payment for non-existent vehicles, used family accounts to conceal his transactions, passed bad checks, stopped payment on refunds, and converted his victims’ funds into cash, court documents said. Rock’s victims included people with disabilities and elderly customers, along with medical transport companies, senior living homes, and other small businesses. Altogether, court documents said Rock fraudulently took in over $2.5 million from more than 100 victims over the course of three years. While some victims were subsequently refunded, often with money received from the scheme’s later victims, over 75 victims remain unpaid and without their purchased vehicle, and more than $1.45 million in fraudulently obtained proceeds remains unreturned by Rock. In addition, Rock sometimes used a forged letter to falsely certify that the vehicles listed for sale were ADA-compliant and had undergone a conversion with a reputable manufacturer of wheelchair-accessible vehicles. Then on several occasions, Rock sold the same vehicle to multiple customers. “After agreeing to sale terms and accepting payment from a customer for a particular vehicle, Rock continued to list, sell, and accept payment for that same vehicle again, this time from a new victim-purchaser,” officials wrote. Officials said Rock was sentenced today to 41 months in prison, three years of supervised release, $1,457,617 in victim restitution, and a forfeiture judgment of $1,469,617. ...read more read less