Mexican and American flags connected to automobiles at a Tricolor dealership in Houston, Texas, Sept. 11, 2025.
Mark Felix | Bloomberg | Getty Photos
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, instructed Chief Monetary Officer Jerome Kollar to ship the ultimate two funds of his $15 million annual bonus on Aug. 19 and 20, in accordance with a federal indictment unsealed on Wednesday.
Chu, who’s accused of participating in “systemic fraud” over roughly seven years via 2025, used among the cash to purchase a “multimillion-dollar property” in Beverly Hills, California, later that month, in accordance with 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 route — by double-pledging the identical property for a number of loans and by having workers manually alter information to make delinquent loans seem eligible as collateral, in accordance with the indictment.
The abrupt collapse of Tricolor was one among a string of defaults that churned the U.S. banking business this fall, sparking issues 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 accordance with the submitting.
Prosecutors cited “secretly recorded” calls in August that included Chu, his CFO and chief working officer the place the founder solid 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 accordance with the indictment.
He then thought of one other tactic: blaming the banks for ignoring crimson flags as a approach to extract a settlement and hold his firm alive, prosecutors mentioned.
In doing so, Chu allegedly in contrast Tricolor with Enron, the vitality firm that collapsed in 2001 after the invention of accounting fraud.
“Enron clearly has a pleasant ring to it, proper?” Chu mentioned, in accordance with the paperwork. “I imply, Enron, Enron raises the blood stress of the lender once they see that.”
