SPOKANE — A federal jury in Spokane has convicted 53-year-old Reynaldo Garza of Othello on five felony counts of odometer tampering, concluding a years-long investigation sparked by local law enforcement.
According to evidence presented at trial, investigators with the Adams County Sheriff’s Office uncovered a pattern in which Garza allegedly bought high-mileage used vehicles at low prices, then installed replacement odometers taken from wrecking yards or used-parts sellers. The swapped-in odometers displayed drastically lower mileage, allowing Garza to misrepresent the true condition of the vehicles and inflate their value.
“In some cases, Garza sold cars by misrepresenting the mileage by up to 100,000 miles less than the actual mileage,” prosecutors said. “In other cases, the difference was tens of thousands of miles.” The scheme netted him thousands of dollars in profit per vehicle…