Illinois Car Dealer Forced to Refund Employees' Retirement Accounts
Today's shady dealership story comes to us from the Chicago suburb of St. Charles.
This is where Nissan of St. Charles owner Fred Vargason was forced to pay more than $13,000 out of his personal accounts toward his employees' retirement funds.
Apparently, Vargason and his store weren't remitting employees' voluntary retirement contributions to their accounts during 2019.
Furthermore, Vargason and his company can no longer serve as fiduciaries or service providers to any Employment Retirement Income Security Act, nor can they commit further violations. A third party has been appointed to oversee the retirement plan, and Vargason also has to pay for that.
This time it was dealership employees, not customers, that got screwed.
[Image: Jon Rehg/Shutterstock.com]
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Tim Healey grew up around the auto-parts business and has always had a love for cars — his parents joke his first word was “‘Vette”. Despite this, he wanted to pursue a career in sports writing but he ended up falling semi-accidentally into the automotive-journalism industry, first at Consumer Guide Automotive and later at Web2Carz.com. He also worked as an industry analyst at Mintel Group and freelanced for About.com, CarFax, Vehix.com, High Gear Media, Torque News, FutureCar.com, Cars.com, among others, and of course Vertical Scope sites such as AutoGuide.com, Off-Road.com, and HybridCars.com. He’s an urbanite and as such, doesn’t need a daily driver, but if he had one, it would be compact, sporty, and have a manual transmission.
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Search on his name and you’ll find more litigation.
Not this guy's first time in the fraud rodeo, as another poster pointed out...he didn't pay off loans on traded-in vehicles OR his dealership's floorplan loans. What an a-hole...
Suburban Chicago Car Dealership Shut Down, Accused of Failing to Pay Off Customer Trade-In Loans – NBC Chicago
Vite v. Vargason, 2020 IL App (2d) 200487 | Casetext Search + Citator
Employee Benefit Security Administration don’t play. EBSA got my daughter’s old employer to kick in their promised 401K portion when they failed to do it.
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