Newport Coast man pleads not guilty to stealing 75 cars

Deepa Bharath

A Newport Coast man pleaded not guilty on Tuesday of stealing 75

vehicles from his employer and selling them for his own profit,

officials said.

The Orange County district attorney on Friday filed 75 counts of

grand theft auto against Bryan Moylan, 43. Prosecutors alleged that

Moylan, a former fleet manager with OCB Reprographics in Irvine,

stole official vehicle title documents for the vehicles leased by the

company through Enterprise Car Rental Corp.

Moylan was in charge of the company’s fleet of delivery trucks and

vans, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Pete Pierce, who is prosecuting the

case.

“Most of the vehicles were Toyota Tacomas,” he said.

Moylan was fired after the company performed an internal

investigation, Pierce said. The alleged fraud took place between

January 2003 and October, he said. The company then turned over the

investigation to the Irvine Police Department, he said.

“The company found out that he had made hundreds of dollars in

profit on all the 75 vehicles he sold,” Pierce said.

Chuck Hayes, chief executive of OCB Reprographics, was not

available for comment on Tuesday.

In 45 of the 75 cases, Moylan fraudulently had the company pay off

the residual on the 36-month leases from Enterprise, Pierce said. In

the remaining cases, he sold the vehicles even as they were being

leased from Enterprise, he added. Moylan turned himself in on

Thursday. A warrant for his arrest was issued earlier last week.

This case “represents a sophisticated and somewhat ingenious

scheme,” Pierce said.

“This is also a serious case given the number of vehicles [Moylan]

embezzled and their value,” he said.

If convicted of all the charges, Moylan faces up to 54 years in

state prison. He is being held in Orange County Jail in lieu of

$300,000 bail, which a judge reduced on Tuesday from $400,000.

A pretrial hearing is scheduled on March 26 and a preliminary

hearing has been set for April 2.

* DEEPA BHARATH covers public safety and courts. She may be

reached at (949) 574-4226 or by e-mail at deepa.bharath@latimes.com.