Two Long Island half-brothers have pleaded guilty to running a car theft and resale operation that authorities say netted $5.5 million by targeting more than 120 vehicle owners across five counties. Mark McCall, 34, of Centereach, and Keith Agard, 32, of Port Jefferson Station, admitted their roles in a scheme that prosecutors say stretched from March 2022 through May 2025.
According to the Suffolk County District Attorney's Office, McCall and Agard ran the operation across Nassau, Suffolk, Kings, Westchester, and Orange counties, using fake documents and little to no money down to buy cars through more than 20 recruited buyers, as reported by DailyVoice. Investigators said April Stokes and Danielle Gera were also key players in the scheme. Prosecutors said McCall, Agard, or trusted associates obtained clean New York State titles showing no liens on the vehicles, leaving unsuspecting buyers unaware that the cars had fraudulent paperwork and thousands of dollars still owed on them.
How the Fraud Was Engineered
The broader investigation into the network, dubbed Operation Gingerbread Man by Suffolk County law enforcement, relied on wiretaps, video surveillance, and monitoring of iCloud accounts over a 2.5-year probe, according to Newsday. Ring leaders used straw buyers nicknamed “bodies” who visited multiple dealerships in rapid succession, inflating their credit scores by adding them as authorized users on established accounts or issuing prepaid credit cards, per the same outlet's reporting. Buyers submitted forged paystubs and utility bills to purchase cars with little to no money down, and the ring moved quickly across Suffolk dealerships to avoid detection.
To keep auto lenders in the dark, contact numbers and addresses on loan paperwork were routed directly to the ring's upper management, ensuring few if any loan payments were ever made, the report notes. The enterprise also cleaned vehicle titles by submitting forged New Jersey title documents to the New York Department of Motor Vehicles to remove lien notices, a tactic that enabled resales averaging nearly $43,000 per car, according to Newsday and confirmed separately by Daily Voice.
Where the Cars Ended Up
Scheme participants resold the fraudulently acquired cars to CarMax and Facebook Marketplace dealers, per DailyVoice's reporting. Beyond those channels, vehicles were also sold at a Pennsylvania auto auction and handed off in cash exchanges to buyers carrying backpacks filled with money at meetup locations in New York City, according to Newsday's account of the investigation. Prosecutors said the scheme's participants stole and sold more than 120 cars in total, earning $5.5 million.
The enterprise fraudulently acquired and resold more than 120 vehicles throughout its roughly three-year run, Newsday reported at the time. The case was prosecuted in Suffolk County Supreme Court before Justice Steven Pilewski by Assistant District Attorneys Blythe Miller and James Bartens.
Guilty Pleas and Sentencing
[b9] The Suffolk County District Attorney's Office said McCall pleaded guilty on September 10 to attempted enterprise corruption and two counts of attempted second-degree weapons possession. He is expected to receive five to seven years in prison when he is sentenced on October 29. Agard pleaded guilty to enterprise corruption and two counts of third-degree weapons possession, and state prison records show he received a sentence of one to three years, with parole eligibility set for June 2, 2027.
Enterprise Corruption, the charge at the center of the case, is a Class B felony under New York Penal Law § 460.20, carrying a mandatory state prison sentence of up to 25 years, according to legal analysis of the statute. Prosecutors said the initial indictment named 33 individuals and two corporations, and of the 35 total defendants, 34 have now pleaded guilty to sentences ranging from several months to multiple years in state prison, according to the Suffolk County PBA. Only one defendant's case remains pending.
The case involved organized vehicle fraud targeting Long Island and the surrounding region, as well as similar schemes involving fake paperwork and cross-state title fraud uncovered in Yonkers and along the New York-New Jersey corridor. Title washing, the practice of exploiting gaps between state motor vehicle databases to erase liens, salvage histories, or stolen vehicle records, remains a persistent multi-state fraud tactic, according to CARFAX. That practice left subsequent buyers holding hidden financial liabilities on cars they had no idea were compromised.
The fraudulent lien removals in the operation left subsequent buyers holding hidden financial liabilities on cars they had no idea were compromised.
