A former Oklahoma Kia and Mitsubishi dealer has pleaded guilty to two counts of tampering with his auto lender fraud case, authorities said last month. A third charge will be dropped as part of a plea deal.

Former Big Red Dealerships owner Bobby Mayes admitted he encouraged and provided funds for his fraud co-defendant Courtney Wells’ flight to Mexico while both awaited sentencing in that case, the Western District of Oklahoma U.S. Attorney’s Office said June 26.

Mayes also told the court he sent it an anonymous email in October 2022, “which contained false allegations of an alleged meeting and evidence as part of an effort to obtain a new trial in the proceeding.”

This appeared to be a reference to an Oct. 5, 2022, email Mayes’ counsel said described prosecutors speaking to and receiving more than 300 pages of text messages from a witness — exchanges allegedly not disclosed to the defense. Authorities called this email, which had been sent to the court, an attempt by Mayes to “gin up fake allegations of prosecutorial misconduct.”

In exchange for the guilty plea, the government plans to drop a third count of tampering and not bring any other obstruction of justice or witness tampering charges against Mayes related to his actions from November 2021 through October 2022.

Mayes, Wells and fellow defendant Charles Gooch were originally found guilty Nov. 19, 2021 of charges including conspiracy to commit wire fraud and multiple counts of wire fraud, forgery and aggravated identity theft. Federal prosecutors said Mayes’ group — which consisted of Big Red Sports/Imports, Big Red Kia, Norman Yamaha, Norman Mitsubishi and Mayes Kia — used a variety of deceptions from January 2014 to March 2019 to convince lenders to issue loans to customers with poor or no credit, a demographic the business had targeted.

The jury convicted Mayes and Gooch on all 25 counts they faced. Wells was convicted on 19 of 25 charges; she was acquitted on six of the 12 wire fraud counts she faced.

The three defendants were awaiting sentencing when Wells and her husband, Brandon Landers, allegedly escaped to Mexico on May 3, 2022, only to be arrested Oct. 24, 2022. Mayes was arrested the next day.

Landers pleaded guilty on Dec. 6, 2022, to one count of conspiracy to tamper with official procedures, admitting he helped Wells run to Mexico to “avoid federal prosecution.” Wells has not been charged with additional crimes.
“[Landers and Wells] individually confirmed that Mr. Mayes was involved in the planning of their flight and indeed the plan was for all three of them to leave and go to Mexico in May,” the U.S. attorney’s office wrote in an Oct. 12, 2022, request to arrest Mayes.

Mayes in June told the court he had “[orchestrated] and helped to secure the unavailability of Courtney Wells.”

Attorneys for Landers and Mayes have not yet responded to July 6 emails seeking comment.

After Wells disappeared in May 2022, Mayes’ defense counsel reported the discovery of emails that “reveal a conspiracy between [a government witness] and Ms. Wells to falsify total loss letters, bribe [a loan officer], steal from the dealership, overvalue pawn items, conduct in-and-outs, and most importantly conceal it all from Mr. Mayes.” The defense filing stated Mayes also checked his personal email account May 10 “and discovered an email from Ms. Wells, dated May 3, 2022, which can only be described as a confession to the crimes for which the defendants were convicted.”

Wells and Landers called those emails fake, according to authorities, who accused Mayes of creating them and charged him with another count of tampering in connection with the documents. However, his new plea agreement with the government drops that third tampering charge.

An attorney for Wells said she sought to return to the U.S. after learning of the fabricated emails.

“When Ms. Wells learned of the … Mayes deception, she was attempting to return to the U.S to turn herself in and expose the fraud,” Robert Gifford of Gifford Law in Oklahoma City wrote in an email July 7. “Ms. Wells was caught in Mexico before she could make it back, but she still exposed the fraud and ended all of the charades.”

Gifford said he didn’t expect Wells would receive further charges. “She has accepted responsibility for her own involvement and is pending sentencing,” he wrote.

Each of the two tampering charges Mayes pleaded guilty to can mean a sentence reaching up to 20 years in prison and up to a $250,000 fine.

Mayes and the government also last month told the court they had reached a sentencing agreement in his fraud case.

The terms of that June 21 agreement include Mayes paying a combined $1.2 million in restitution to lenders, including $480,195.79 to Santander Consumer USA, $156,327.08 to Flagship Credit Acceptance and $109,938.83 to Encore Automotive Acceptance; accepting a monetary judgment of $1 million in profit subject to asset forfeiture; and facing potential sentencing of 108 to 135 months in prison, not counting mandatory minimum sentencing requirements.

The Western District of Oklahoma U.S. Attorney’s Office agreed it would not prosecute Mayes for any other behavior related to the case, including other acts of wire and bank fraud and aggravated identity theft from 2012 through November 2021.

The ultimate disposition of the case remains up to the court, which has not yet scheduled a date for sentencing proceedings.