A federal judge in San Diego just put a number on what happens when a classic car consignment shop runs entirely on trust and zero oversight: $9,951,763.04. That’s what U.S. District Judge Andrew G. Schopler ordered Andrea Nicole Doherty to pay 66 victims after she pleaded guilty to selling the same vintage Porsche to two different buyers, forging a title transfer on a third, and pocketing more than $827,000 along the way. She’ll serve 21 months for it.
Doherty, 38, took over CPR Classic in Fallbrook, California, after her father died in 2021. The shop restored classic Porsches and sold them on consignment out of a storefront, handling everything from the mechanical work to the paperwork that legally moves a car from one owner to the next. Doherty ran it as a sole proprietorship, never incorporated and never registered as an LLC, which meant there was no corporate structure standing between her personal finances and the shop’s obligations. That detail matters more than it sounds: when a consignment business collapses under fraud charges, victims dealing with an unincorporated operator are chasing one person’s assets, not a company with its own balance sheet.
The scheme prosecutors laid out in her plea agreement reads like a case study in how easily a consignment sale can be turned into a shell game. Between 2022 and 2023, Doherty sold a 1973 Porsche 911E Targa to two separate buyers without telling either one about the other, and without paying the original seller. When that seller finally got a check from Doherty after transferring the title, it bounced.
The second car was worse. In February 2023, Doherty agreed to sell a 1972 Porsche 911S on consignment and found a buyer within a day, who wired her $280,000 inside a week. She handed over the car but never transferred legal title and never paid the seller. Eight months later, in October 2023, she sold the same 911S again, this time to a different buyer who wired $275,000. Doherty used part of that money to finally pay the original seller, who then transferred the title to the October buyer, who had no idea a February buyer already had the car sitting in his garage. Two people paid full price for one Porsche; only one of them ended up with clean paperwork.
The third case involved a 1983 Porsche 930 Turbo Slantnose, sold on consignment for $130,000 without the owner’s knowledge or payment. To close the sale, Doherty forged the owner’s signature on the title transfer document. The buyer didn’t find out anything was wrong for more than a year, until he contacted the car’s actual owner directly, who was stunned to learn his Porsche had already been sold and delivered despite still being listed as available on the CPR Classic website.
California’s DMV suspended CPR Classic’s vehicle dealer license in September 2024, and the business shut down shortly after. By then, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the California DMV’s Criminal Investigations division were already building a case that would eventually involve 66 identified victims, a number that kept climbing even after Doherty’s guilty plea as more former customers came forward once the fraud became public. Doherty pleaded guilty in December 2025 to three counts of wire fraud under 18 U.S.C. Section 1343, a federal statute that carries a maximum of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine per count. On paper, she faced up to 60 years. She got 21 months.
“She took customers for a ride. Today, justice brought the trip to an end,” U.S. Attorney Adam Gordon said at sentencing. FBI Special Agent in Charge Mark Remily was more pointed about what the case represents for the bureau’s priorities, framing it as a warning to anyone running a business on borrowed trust rather than lawful practice.
The gap between what Doherty admitted to pocketing personally, $827,000, and the $9.95 million restitution order is the real story here. Wire fraud cases built around a handful of specific transactions can trigger restitution obligations for every victim connected to the broader scheme, not just the ones named in the charging documents. Doherty’s plea agreement bound her to repay not only her five original victims but more than 50 additional former CPR Classic customers, and that number grew again before sentencing. It’s a pattern worth remembering: a federal fraud case that looks like it’s about three cars and $827,000 can end with a restitution order twelve times larger once every affected customer is accounted for.
None of this would have been possible without the specific mechanics of how classic car consignment works. A consignment shop typically holds both the car and, functionally, control over its paperwork while a sale is arranged. The seller hands over a vehicle worth six figures and trusts the dealer to find a buyer, collect payment, and forward it along, all without any escrow account or independent third party verifying that money and title move together. There’s no equivalent of a real estate closing agent in most classic car consignment deals. Nothing forced Doherty to transfer title before touching wired funds, and nothing stopped her from listing an already-sold Slantnose on her own website for over a year.
Anyone consigning a car worth real money, and vintage 911 values have made six figures an ordinary baseline, should treat the transaction with the same skepticism as a private sale. Insist that title transfers to the buyer at the same time funds clear, not weeks or months later. Confirm the shop’s dealer license is current directly with the DMV before signing anything, since a suspended license like CPR Classic’s is a fast way to spot a business already in trouble. The same caution applies to wiring money for any classic car sale, a lesson we’ve covered before when an Ohio buyer lost thousands chasing a listing that was never real.
Restitution orders this size deserve a reality check, too. Federal restitution is notoriously difficult to collect in full. Doherty’s 66 victims are legally owed nearly $10 million, but actual collection depends on future wages, seized assets, and whatever the Consumer Motor Vehicle Recovery Corporation and DMV complaint process can claw back, not a lump-sum payout. It’s a familiar pattern whenever a dealership operator gets buried under a restitution figure that outpaces anything they could plausibly repay in a lifetime.
The three Porsches at the center of this case are just metal and paperwork now, sorted out through a federal court rather than a bill of sale, but their ownership history is permanently more complicated than it should be, the same kind of mess that can follow a collector car for years after a fraud case closes. Doherty’s sentence ends the criminal case. It does nothing to un-ring the bell for the 66 people still waiting on checks that may never fully arrive.
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