A Toyota dealership in the United States had an employee from an outsourced workshop trained to operate the automaker's internal reimbursement system. Three years after this training, the workshop is being sued for using this access to request over US$ 2.1 million (equivalent to R$ 10.7 million) in paint repairs that were, in most cases, unnecessary.
The lawsuit was filed against Autobody Squad, based in Malden (Massachusetts), its former owner, Fabio Gomes, and two former Toyota collaborators in Watertown, in the Boston metropolitan area: Rodney Dukes, who was the fixed operations director, and Paul Nguyen, a former service consultant. According to the petition, these two individuals received illicit payments and gifts to ensure that the fraudulent requests were kept going.
The focus of the fraud was the Customer Support Program ZKG, established by Toyota in 2019 with the purpose of financing the repair of peeling paint caused by defective primer. This program is intended for reimbursement to duly accredited dealerships and workshops.
The procedure described in the lawsuit was relatively simple, which made it difficult to detect. Autobody Squad took photos of the vehicles and entered this data into the system using the dealership's credentials. Thus, they obtained the program approval code and passed it on to Nguyen, who, in turn, created the repair orders and sent the billing to Toyota.
The service orders contained the identification number of a dealership technician, who, according to the lawsuit, did not perform any inspection. In 2022, a workshop employee gained access and training to the ZKG portal without the store administration knowing about it.
Initially, the requests were sporadic, ranging between US$ 3,000 and US$ 6,000 (R$ 15,300 to R$ 30,600). However, in 2021, when Autobody Squad became the exclusive partner of the dealership, the billed amounts increased to the range of US$ 7,000 to US$ 10,000 (R$ 35,700 to R$ 51,000), accompanied by an increase in the volume of requests.
An audit conducted between March 2025 and February 2026 revealed the distortion: the Watertown unit registered an average of 30 monthly paint requests, while other brand dealerships registered ten or fewer. Of the inspected vehicles, 178—representing up to 80% of the total—showed no signs of peeling at all; the remaining 20% exhibited the problem only on certain panels. In total, 223 requests did not meet the program requirements but were approved.
The dealership questioned Gomes about the increase in cases, but, according to the lawsuit, accepted the justification and attributed the result to the workshop's efficiency. Even after the audit, the company allegedly persisted in collecting and processing fraudulent requests.
Dukes and Nguyen were dismissed. Dukes is held responsible for breach of fiduciary duty, while Nguyen and Autobody Squad are responsible for complicity in this violation. The four defendants are accused of civil conspiracy. The case came to light through the publication of Automotive News.
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