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The west-side shop at 14900 Livernois Ave. and Chalfonte Street. (Photo: Google Street View)
The owner of a west-side bump shop appears set to plead guilty for his alleged role in a scheme that entailed bribing Detroit cops for business then fraudulently billing insurance companies for repairs.
Livernois Collision owner Daniel Dabish was charged with mail fraud March 1 in a criminal information, The Detroit News reports.
Three Detroit police sources told The Detroit News in 2017 that the alleged Livernois Collision scheme involved paying cops to route stolen vehicles with minimal damage to the shop. The vehicles would be stripped, and Livernois officials would then bill insurance companies to replace the parts, collect the money, and put the original parts back onto the cars.
According to the March 1 filing, "It was ... part of the scheme that the inflated, false and fraudulent claims for automotive repairs purportedly performed at the shop would contain materially false statements pertaining to the nature of the covered damages to the vehicles and the cost and nature of the replacement parts used in the repairs.
"In order to initially get the vehicles subject to false claims into the shop, Dabish paid some Detroit Police Officers, including ... Deonne Dotson, money in exchange for their agreement to be influenced and rewarded in their official capacities as police officers to direct the towing of damaged or abandoned vehicles to the defendant's collision shop for repair," according to the filing.
Dotson is awaiting trial for his alleged role. Five other Detroit officers have pleaded guilty to extortion.
Livernois Collision previously filed a federal lawsuit alleging officers falsified documents that the company was being investigated for insurance fraud in order to wrongfully tow vehicles held in its lot as part of a separate scheme benefiting imprisoned towing magnate Gasper Fiore.
