Man gets 15 months house arrest for ‘homemade’ trailer scheme

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This article was published 30/09/2017 (2978 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A man who admitted to exploiting a loophole in the Manitoba Public Insurance registration system to flip stolen trailers and sell them as “homemade” has been given 15 months under house arrest.

Robert Warren Simpson, 34, pleaded guilty to multiple counts of possession of stolen property, tampering with vehicle identification numbers (VINs) and trafficking property obtained by a crime.

Police received a tip in March of 2016 that Simpson and a co-accused were stealing trailers from around Manitoba and Saskatchewan and turning around and selling them on eBrandon, according to the pre-sentencing report.

Police were provided further information that one of the trailers Simpson had stolen was sitting in a parking lot near Burger King in Brandon. A VIN check showed it had been stolen from a resident in Dauphin.

Officers then found an advertisement posted on the website that matched the reported trailer and set up a meeting.

Simpson and the co-accused arrived together and showed the undercover officer the trailer, which appeared to have the VIN welded over and a fake number etched in, which was registered as a homemade trailer.

Upon arrest, Simpson provided a statement admitting he could recall stealing and selling five trailers over a two-month period.

MPI records showed Simpson opened a new vehicle account. However, he was unable to register the plates in his name due to an outstanding fine. He would instead gift the licence plates to his wife — who had no idea the trailers were stolen — and she would register them as homemade trailers.

Simpson admitted to then grinding the numbers off the trailers and putting on his own, fake number to provide to MPI when he registered them as homemade trailers to get a new VIN.

“There’s extensive planning and premeditation in Mr. Simpson’s actions, in essentially stealing the vehicles, grinding of the VIN numbers, exploiting the MPI licensing scheme in order to get the stolen trailers registered as homemade trailers … and then selling them to unsuspecting purchasers,” Crown attorney Brett Rach said.

Simpson was, however, extremely co-operative with police, Rach added, going so far as to help officers track down the trailers he had stolen from the people they were sold to.

“He appears to be remorseful of his actions,” Rach said.

Defence lawyer Andrew Synyshyn said Simpson was experiencing a variety of pressures in his life and started down a slippery slope that snowballed into the offences for which he was charged.

Simpson is also considered to be a low risk to reoffend and a good candidate for rehabilitation, Synyshyn added.

“It’s pretty clear in looking at the particulars of the offences and the report, the motivation really was a financial one,” Judge Donovan Dvorak said. “You were looking for quick money and were prepared to victimize others to do it.”

In addition to the 15 months of house arrest, Simpson was ordered to pay $10,265.32 in restitution and approximately $2,000 in fines.

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