A Holyoke man has been arrested after he allegedly repeatedly accepted deposits for a 1999 Dodge Durango (above) from several different buyers but delivered the vehicle, which does not belong to him, to none of them. (Photo by Carl E. Hartdegen)
WESTFIELD – An online car salesman has apparently discovered a way to keep his inventory costs way down – he sells one vehicle (which doesn’t belong to him) over and over again but never delivers it to any of the buyers.
He does, however, keep their deposits if he can.
City police were alerted to the practice Sunday when a Belchertown couple came to the police station to complain that they had made a $400 deposit for a car offered on an Internet web site, craigslist.com, but did not get the car.
The couple told Lt. Michael Ugolik that they had met the seller in Agawam and taken a test drive before giving the man a $400 deposit but he told them that he had to complete repairs to the car before he could deliver it.
After that be became difficult to reach, the victims said and, when they were able to speak with him, he gave them excuses to delay them.
They told Ugolik that, when they saw that the same 1999 Dodge Durango was again posted for sale on the web site, a friend agreed to pose as a buyer to see if the man would attempt to sell it again.
Their friend spoke with the suspect who set up a meeting in Westfield.
Ugolik enlisted Det. Brian Freeman to pose as the ostensible buyer and he agreed to the meeting.
However, Freeman investigated the name the man had given the Belchertown couple without success but when he investigated the name the victims had been asked to make their check payable to, Kenneth Fish, he found that the suspect’s license had been suspended.
He also found that Fish, 33, of 37 Fairfield Ave., Holyoke, using several names, has been the suspect in similar crimes in at least three other jurisdictions.
The first incident involving Fish and a Dodge Durango Freeman found was a November, 2012, report from Chicopee in which Fish allegedly sold his father’s SUV to a Chicopee resident for $1,400 and then stole the car from the buyer.
In that case, Freeman reports “It appears that Fish took the reporting Officers (sic) advice and returned the $1,400 and was not charged criminally.”
That case may have involved a different vehicle as the Durango sold and apparently stolen in that case was reported to be a 2000 model while all the other cases involve a 1999 Dodge Durango, reportedly owned by Fish’s father.
Freeman found a total of seven incidents involving Fish and sale of a Durango but reports that he is believed to have been charged in the other jurisdictions only twice either because he made restitution to avoid charges or due to “lack of evidence or lack of interest from the victims.”
Freeman found that a Holyoke victim who gave Fish (who was calling himself Kenneth Hollimon) a $200 deposit for the SUV in March who later told her tale of woe to a co-worker. The other woman commiserated with her saying that she had suffered “a similar problem with a man named Kenneth Fish.”
Freeman reports that the investigating officer in that case told him that while he was working on his investigation, “Kenneth Fish happened to go to the Holyoke Police to pay yet another victim $500 for the same thing” and he “arranged a deal for Fish to pay $200 back to the victim instead of being charged.”
When looking into a similar incident in West Springfield, Freeman reports he spoke a detective who said that he had investigated a Jan. 20 complaint from a resident who reportedly had made $500 deposit for a Durango that was never delivered.
That detective told him that his department had “other reports of this same crime involving Kenneth Fish” which have not been prosecuted “because of lack of evidence or lack of interest from the victims.”
Freeman said that he had not been able to complete his case against Fish before he came to the city to meet him in his role as the suspect’s latest victim but, because the man’s license was suspended, he had leverage.
When Fish drove to the gas station to meet Freeman, thinking him yet another mark, he was stopped en route by Officer John Barnachez who arrested him for operating a motor vehicle with a suspended license.
Freeman said that he had stationed the complainants in a parking lot across the street from the meeting place so they could observe and Fish “coincidentally pulled in next to the Belchertown victims” when he was stopped by Barnachez.
Freeman said that, after Barnachez stopped Fish, he approached the Durango and pointed out the Belchertown couple while informing him that he, a city detective, was the person Fish had been planning to meet.
His face crumpled, Freeman said.
The vehicle was seized and towed to the police impound yard.
Freeman also said that one of the Belchertown victims told him later that he had managed to make telephone contact with Fish while he was en route to meet Freeman and the man said that the reason he couldn’t meet then to deliver the vehicle was that he was in a hospital where his mother was dying.
Because Fish was held on the motor vehicle charge until he was arraigned in Westfield District Court on Monday, Freeman said that Fish missed a court appointment in the Greenfield District Court.
By the time Fish had resolved his issues in Greenfield on Tuesday, Freeman had completed his investigation and obtained a warrant, he said.
Fish was returned to the Westfield court where he was arraigned before Judge Philip A. Contant on charges of larceny of property valued more than $250 by a single scheme and attempting to commit a crime.
Contant wrote that Fish “has numerous other pending cases which may be similar to the charges in this case pending” in Springfield and Holyoke district courts.
Although he ordered $500 cash bail pending a July 25 hearing in the Westfield case, Contant revoked Fish’s bail “on three separate Springfield District Court cases” and ordered that he be held without right to bail pending his next appearance in the Springfield court July 17.
Freeman said that although there are several similar crimes linked to Fish “there could be others that we don’t know about yet because he’s been stringing people along.”
He asks that anybody who has suffered a similar experience call him at 572-6400 or 642-9388.
