Ashley Duff, Ginger Sipes charged with rolling back odometers at ABB Auto World dealership

The president and a salesperson at a former Brookhaven auto dealership were charged in connection with a yearslong odometer rollback scheme, the Suffolk district attorney said in a news release.

ABB Auto World president Ashley Duff, 27, of Shirley, according to the Tuesday release, was arraigned on April 17 before acting  state Supreme Court Justice Steven A. Pilewski on charges of scheme to defraud, a felony, and conspiracy, a misdemeanor. Ginger Sipes, 58, also of Shirley, was arraigned Monday before acting state Supreme Court Justice Karen M. Wilutis on the same charges.

Both women pleaded not guilty and were released on their own recognizance. The women could not be reached for comment on Tuesday. An attorney representing them, Lindsay Henry, of Babylon Village, also could not be reached on Tuesday.

The release alleged a scheme in which ABB Auto World bought vehicles with as many as 200,000 miles at car auctions, then rolled the odometers back and sold the vehicles on Facebook Marketplace, accompanied by allegedly fraudulent paperwork showing false lower mileages.

“Tampering with vehicle odometers and inflating prices undermines trust in the marketplace, which has a devastating impact on honest local business owners, and causes consumers to purchase vehicles at artificially inflated prices,” said District Attorney Ray Tierney in a statement.

A spokeswoman for Tierney, Tania Lopez, said in an interview that ABB Auto World shut down last year after getting a cease-and-desist letter from the state Department of Motor Vehicles for operating as an unlicensed car dealership.

In an email, DMV spokesman Walter McClure said the department investigated and issued civil penalties after receiving "several consumer complaints" about Duff and ABB Auto World. "Neither Duff nor the facility have been previously licensed anywhere in the state," he wrote.

According to the release, between July 27, 2020, and May 6, 2022, more than a dozen alleged victims complained about the practice to Suffolk County police.

The alleged scheme unraveled in some cases because “the odometers would reset themselves after [the buyers] got off the lot,” Lopez said. In other cases, purchasers learned that the mileage on their odometers did not match the numbers kept by the DMV or automobile insurance companies, she said.

Newsday could not locate corporate records for ABB Auto World on New York State’s corporation registry. Florida records show Duff registered the company in that state in 2020 and the company was dissolved in 2022.

Duff and Sipes are due back in court May 30.

According to the release, Dets. Randy Edwards and Kevin Braithwaite of the Suffolk County Police Department’s District Attorney Squad conducted the investigation with help from the National Insurance Crime Bureau, a trade group for vehicle insurance, rental and finance companies. A spokesman for the group declined to comment.