Garage owner used a couple of tricks to help 15,000 NC drivers avoid emissions tests
Turns out the owner of Friendly Auto Repair in Charlotte was a little too friendly.
Now, Jamal Saymeh will spend a year and a day in prison.
On Monday, U.S. District Judge Frank Whitney of Charlotte sentenced the North Tryon Street repair-shop owner for fraudulently approving more than 15,000 cars and trucks that otherwise would have failed North Carolina vehicle-emission tests.
As part of his scheme, prosecutors say Saymeh billed his customers more than twice what they would have normally paid for an actual emissions check while also short-changing the state by more than $80,000 in inspection fees.
In December, Saymeh pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to defraud the Clean Air Act, and two counts of violating the act. As part of his sentence, Saymeh must also pay almost $1.3 million in combined fines and restitution.
U.S. Attorney Dena King and other state and federal officials say that Saymeh single-handedly helped worsen the air and increase the risk of respiratory disease in Charlotte-Mecklenburg.
“Vehicle emissions testing is required to protect the health and safety of our communities,” King said in a statement after the sentencing.
“ ... We will hold polluters accountable for their actions.”
Saymeh’s attorney, Rob Heroy of Charlotte, said Monday that his client has “accepted responsibility for his decisions and was prepared to face the consequences. He is now ready to get past this and move on with his life.”
Saymeh, 59, opened his repair shop in 2017. The N.C. Department of Transportation licensed him to perform emissions inspections that same year.
His scheme, which involved a practice known as “county swaps,” was deceptively simple, and Saymeh dealt in bulk.
Under the Clean Air Act, vehicles in urban counties such as Mecklenburg are required to undergo annual emissions tests. Those in counties with better overall air quality do not.
Over a five-year period ending in 2022, Saymeh falsely re-coded the registration of more than 11,500 vehicles from a county that required testing to one that did not. He also changed the vehicle information for 3,622 light trucks, which require testing, to “heavy” models, which don’t. Prosecutors say all 15,000 vehicles would have failed their emissions tests if Saymeh had done legitimate checks.
Mecklenburg County is home to more than 865,000 registered vehicles. Court documents reveal the vast amount of emission testing one garage can do. Or not.
Saymeh performed his first coding “county swap” on May 5, 2017, documents claim, then quickly expanded his operation. Over a four-month period starting in mid-May 2021, Friendly Auto performed more than 6,900 inspections with a “high percentage of them” falsified, prosecutors say.
Over a five-day period in February 2021, Friendly Auto Repair performed almost 1,100 inspections. Roughly 10% of them were fraudulent, the filings show. On June 26 of that year, the shop logged in 26 inspections. All but two were false.
Undercover officers visited the garage in September 2021 and January 2022. Both investigators drove vehicles registered in Mecklenburg that had the “check engine light” engaged. Saymeh, according to plea documents, told the officers that an inspection with an emissions test, normally $30, would instead cost $80.
Neither car ever entered an inspection bay or was connected to an emissions analyzer. Instead, Saymeh flipped the registered counties.
He also asked the first undercover officer to share his name with her friends.
This story was originally published May 2, 2023 at 5:30 AM.
