Connellsville Car Dealer & Employee Indicted

A federal grand jury in Pittsburgh has indicted a Fayette County used car dealer and one of his employees. Authorities say they defrauded the federal government by filing bogus COVID-19 loan and benefits applications. Thirty-six-year-old Joshua DeWitt, the owner of RC Auto Sales in Connellsville, and 45-year-old Terrence Newmeyer Jr., a salesman for DeWitt, were named in a five-count indictment handed up Tuesday charging them with mail fraud and conspiracy to commit mail and bank fraud. The men, both Connellsville residents, are accused of filing a series of fraudulent applications for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance benefits and Paycheck Protection Program loans on behalf of the dealership’s customers, misrepresenting the nature of the applications, and in some cases, telling them the application was for money to buy a car from RC. When customers received debit cards in the mail loaded with pandemic relief funds, DeWitt and Newmeyer told them to bring them to the dealership and turn the cards over to the two of them for their control.