Herb Chambers sues Somerville used-car dealer, alleges racketeering

Herb Chambers Infiniti of Boston charges a former sales manager improperly sold at least 20 cars to a Somerville dealership in an attempt to ease his personal financial problems.

In a lawsuit originally filed in Suffolk Superior Court, but transferred to US District Court in Boston, the Chambers dealership accuses Reza Parinejad, owner of Webster Auto Sales, of taking advantage of Donald Smith's precarious finances to get him to sell Webster used Infinitis and other high-value used carsat below-market rates in exchange for forgiving loans to SMith and to then forge sales documents that showed higher values for Herb Chambers' accounting department.

The suit, which names both Parinejad and Smith, alleges violations of the federal anti-racketeering law because it claims Parinejad threatened Smith in an effort to get him to agree to the deal and because some of the cars were sold to buyers in other states.

At issue are cars with a total value of roughly $600,000.

In an affidavit filed with the original suit, Smith acknowledged the Chambers allegations were essentially correct. In his answer, Parinejad says he had no clue that Smith was doing anything improper, that he believed he was buying the cars legally, that Chambers should be going only after Smith and, oh, a court should order Smith to pay him damages for all the trouble he's caused.

Chambers says it has a company policy against selling cars to other dealers because of past problems with fraud and that employees know the dealership only disposes of used cars at a Lynn auto auction.