Police: Kyle Daugherty Drove Stolen Aston Martin To Dealership, Fraudulently Paid For Porsche
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (CBS4) -- Colorado Springs police arrested a 29-year-old Lone Tree man after they say he drove a stolen Aston Martin to a car dealership and tried to pay for a $100,000 Porsche with a forged check. Kyle Daugherty admitted to police it wasn't his first time doing so, that he had spent the previous two weeks fraudulently purchasing expensive rides - more than a million dollars worth in high-end cars, according to investigators' tabulation.
Daugherty was taken from the showroom Wednesday to a courtroom Friday morning.
Despite his high-priced habit, he was unable to pay the $23,000 cash bond needed to get out of jail.
The wheels came off Daugherty's spree when warnings spread among Front Range dealerships.
"He just walked in as a customer Tuesday and wanted to buy a car," said Manuela Rijkse, a salesperson at Porsche of Colorado Springs. "He said he would pay cash for it. I think that was a stupid move. He let us run his credit. It didn't add up at all."
Daugherty told Rijkse he had just received an inheritance from his grand parents' cattle ranch. He drove a brand new F-350 on Tuesday and said he was buying the Porsche for his wife. He wanted all the warranties and extras that were offered.
"It was too easy. He didn't negotiate or anything," Rijkse told CBS4. "It didn't feel right."
Still, Rijkse set up Daugherty's purchase of the 2020 Porsche Cayenne for the following day to be completed with a cashier's check.
Then, after Daugherty left, the dealership's management received a warning from employees at the Porsche dealership in Littleton: Earlier that day, a man using the same name attempted to purchase a car there, but failed. Daugherty had told those employees he would wire the money to the dealership. That transaction never happened, according to Littleton Police Department Commander Trent Cooper. Daugherty vanished.
"He never came back in after he went out to get his credit cards," Cooper said.
Daugherty apparently developed expensive tastes a week earlier, Cooper said. Littleton detectives believe Daugherty dropped off a 2017 Jaguar at Stephenson Imports for repairs on Jan. 24. He wrote a a $92,000 personal check for a 2020 Jag and drove it away. Three days later, with the dealership's bank yet to determine the check was bad, Daugherty returned to the same dealership driving a Ford F-350 pickup. This time he wrote a fake $61,000 check for a 2021 model Jaguar and hit the open road.
"I wouldn't mind having a $92,000 Jaguar parked in my driveway," Cooper joked, "(but) I don't know if I could handle the stress of driving around in a stolen car all day. I kind of like having my cars paid off."
Cooper said Stephenson's management contacted the 2020 Jaguar's previous owner. That person activated the vehicle's GPS and it was located - at an unspecified Mike Ward dealership in the south metro area.
That could be the place where Daugherty obtained the Aston Martin, Cooper said.
According to Rijkse, the Porsche salesperson in Colorado Springs, Daugherty bragged to her about that Aston Martin.
"He told me he just bought a DBX for $240,000."
She also noticed he had 14 different car keys on his key chain.
As soon as Daugherty walked in her dealership's doors on Wednesday, the police were called. And Rijkse "stalled him like crazy," she said.
She spoke about the weather, what he did the previous night, and other topics as co-workers attempted to block Daugherty's view of the parking lot.
"He got nervous, you could tell," Rijkse said. "I didn't let him know that we knew. (But) I was shook. I didn't know if he was armed."
CSPD officers walked in, followed closely by detectives from the department's Motor Vehicle Theft Unit and Financial Crimes Unit.
"Once they had established everything and put all the pieces together, CSPD was right on the scene," Joe Brenner, General Manager of Porsche of Colorado Springs, told CBS affiliate KKTV.
Daugherty surrendered peacefully.
"It's a little scary in the moment, but I would do it again," Rijkse said. "You do what you do. I'm not hiding under the table. I was just so happy we stopped him because the other dealerships didn't."
The manager of a nearby Ford dealership arrived after the arrest and provided a statement to police, Rijkse said. The F-350 had been purchased illegally from him in the days before.
Police were able to recover three other vehicles in the Colorado Springs area that Mr. Daugherty had stolen through fraudulent means, according to CSPD. Several others are still missing, but Daugherty had keys to all of them in his possession.
The police investigation remains opens and case documents are sealed at this time. Thus, the public is not yet privy to the total number of dealerships Daugherty defrauded and cars he acquired, the step-by-step details of his activity, or how he managed to collect vehicles while operating in a leave-one/take-one mode.
What is known about Daugherty: He already had four felony warrants out of Arapahoe and Broomfield counties for offenses involves theft, ID theft and aggravated motor vehicle theft dating back to April of 2020. Also, he was still on probation for a 2019 vehicle theft in Larimer County.
Daugherty is scheduled to appear in El Paso County court March 15.
