Mexican and American flags hooked up to automobiles at a Tricolor dealership in Houston, Texas, Sept. 11, 2025.
Mark Felix | Bloomberg | Getty Pictures
The CEO of subprime auto agency Tricolor directed a deputy to ship him $6.25 million in bonuses in August as fraudulent schemes propping up the corporate unraveled, U.S. prosecutors alleged.
Daniel Chu, the CEO and founding father of Tricolor, advised Chief Monetary Officer Jerome Kollar to ship the ultimate two funds of his $15 million annual bonus on Aug. 19 and 20, in response to a federal indictment unsealed on Wednesday.
Chu, who’s accused of participating in “systemic fraud” over roughly seven years by way of 2025, used among the cash to purchase a “multimillion-dollar property” in Beverly Hills, California, later that month, in response to the submitting.
Inside days of Chu’s bonus funds, Tricolor put greater than 1,000 workers on unpaid leaves of absence. By Sept. 10, the corporate filed for chapter safety.
Attorneys representing Chu did not instantly reply to emails requesting touch upon the allegations.
Prosecutors say Tricolor created about $800 million in “bogus collateral” — at Chu’s course — by double-pledging the identical belongings for a number of loans and by having workers manually alter information to make delinquent loans seem eligible as collateral, in response to the indictment.
The abrupt collapse of Tricolor was considered one of a string of defaults that churned the U.S. banking business this fall, sparking considerations over underappreciated dangers within the American monetary system.
Across the time of the bonus funds, Chu allegedly knew his firm was, in his personal phrases, “mainly historical past,” in response to the submitting.
Prosecutors cited “secretly recorded” calls in August that included Chu, his CFO and chief working officer the place the founder forged about for tactics to maintain the corporate’s lenders at bay.
Whereas the indictment did not identify the banks that Tricolor allegedly defrauded, JPMorgan Chase, Barclays and Fifth Third Financial institution have disclosed costs tied to the borrower.
After Tricolor’s lenders confronted Chu over questions on collateral pledged for loans, the CEO proposed a lie that among the manipulated information was tied to a Trump administration mortgage deferment program, in response to the indictment.
He then thought-about one other tactic: blaming the banks for ignoring purple flags as a strategy to extract a settlement and preserve his firm alive, prosecutors stated.
In doing so, Chu allegedly in contrast Tricolor with Enron, the power firm that collapsed in 2001 after the invention of accounting fraud.
“Enron clearly has a pleasant ring to it, proper?” Chu stated, in response to the paperwork. “I imply, Enron, Enron raises the blood stress of the lender after they see that.”