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Source: The Press-Enterprise, Riverside, Calif.mini storageNov. 08--Details of the felony sales tax evasion case against Nader and Ahmad Sami are starting to emerge, as the A-One Auto center owners remain in jail and customers hunt for clues on the fate of the vehicles they purchased or brought in for service work.A bail hearing, originally set for today, has been reset to Nov. 26."This case is still really in flux,'' Nader Sami's defense attorney Donald Hartwig said.The Sami brothers, who each remain in the Robert Presley Detention Center on $2.6 million bail, were arraigned Oct. 31 on six felony tax evasion charges, misdemeanor charges of making, signing or verifying false reports and white collar crime.Ahmad, 38, and Nader, 45, were taken into custody two days earlier as state agents from the state Franchise Tax Board and Board of Equalization served search warrants on their Riverside homes and car dealerships in Riverside and San Bernardino to seize files, sales contracts and computers.Hartwig said he's gotten 32 boxes of documents, so far.State investigator Bernalyn Alcantara, in a court filing, said justification for the investigation and raid sprang from an A-One Auto audit that revealed $402,842 in sales tax had not been sent to the state from July 1, 2007 through June 30, 2011.Computer programs, sales records and other files seized led to allegations the tax evasion met white collar crime standards.The Samis, as of now, are accused of failure to pay $2.53 million of $13.3 million in sales tax collected from customers to the Board of Equalization on $124.4 million in total sales for the period Jan. 1, 2006 through June 30, 2013.Hartwig said the defense team is going through the paperwork now."A lot of the allegations are based on information that hasn't been verified yet, or is not correct,'' he said. "Our numbers are less than half of what the state is claiming. We are in a holding pattern right now, as we go through all the evidence -- as does the government."The discrepancies and volume of paperwork pushed back the bail hearing date.Customers say they are in the dark or are getting push-back, as well.The day after the Sami brothers were taken into custody, and their homes and businesses were searched by state agents, cars were towed off the car lots in Riverside and San Bernardino. The gates to the businesses employing 30 to 50 people were locked.Now, some of the customers are learning the paperwork that is to be sent to the Department of Motor Vehicles to register the vehicle not in their name or that the money owed to cred迷你倉tors on cars they traded in has not gotten to the lien-holders.One BMW-buyer said he signed papers on a car and put down a deposit, but never drove the car off the lot. The car is sitting in the service garage, he said, as the status of finance papers he signed and the deposit he paid remain a question mark.Debbie Lemire said she was with a relative the day he traded a car in on a BMW roadster. "Everything was fine, so it seemed -- until he received a call from his credit union,'' Lemire said.The credit union told the man who never missed a car payment, and has a copy of a sales contract with A-One that says $5,900 would be paid on the trade-in."Now, he owes on two cars, and he doesn't know where one of them is,'' Lemire said.A third customer, who recapped paying $900 in sales tax on a jeep he bought at A-One Auto three months ago, said he just learned the vehicle is registered in two other states. It was never registered in his name, he said.Hartwig, after saying that A-One paid over $150,000 in sales tax last month, acknowledged some customers are in varying states of limbo because of the raid.The A-One Auto assets and bank accounts were frozen, he said, so payroll can't be made and documents can't be filed with the DMV."They can't pay fees that are due. They can't release vehicles in the service bays. They can't pay a penny to anyone. They are just frozen in time,'' he said.Because the case involves two or more related felonies, a material element of fraud or embezzlement, and the alleged conduct involves more than $1.8 million in tax evasion, Riverside County District Attorney Paul Zellerbach has asked the court to preserve the Samis assets.Nine banks have gotten court orders to disclose accounts and assets of the brothers and their companies, and vehicles were impounded, including a Bentley convertible, off-road vehicle, Chevy coupe and Yamaha boat.State prosecutors and investigators have declined to discuss the case. Spokesmen with the Board of Equalization and Department of Motor Vehicles said they would look into the situation involving snags customers have had, and respond at a later time with a comment.That response did not come as of Friday.Zellerbach is also seeking an aggravated white collar crime enhancement against the two. If convicted, the two can be liable for fines of more than $5.2 million and victim restitution of $2.6 million or more.Copyright: ___ (c)2013 The Press-Enterprise (Riverside, Calif.) Visit The Press-Enterprise (Riverside, Calif.) at .PE.com Distributed by MCT Information Services文件倉