A woman who defrauded customers of her Fallbrook-based Porsche restoration and resale business was sentenced Friday to one year and nine months in prison.
Andrea Nicole Doherty, 38, pleaded guilty to three counts of wire fraud for taking more than $827,000 from customers during the years after she took over the business, CPR Classic, from her father following his 2021 death.
Prosecutors say customers agreed to sell or purchase vehicles through the company, yet either didn’t receive the cars they purchased or the money they were owed through the vehicle sales.
The wire fraud counts Doherty pleaded guilty to pertain to three specific car sales.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office said one Porsche was sold to two separate buyers and Doherty accepted payments from both without informing or paying the seller.
Another time, she agreed to sell a car and took $280,000 from a buyer, but did not give that money to the seller, prosecutors said. She later took $275,000 from another buyer and used part of that money to pay the seller.
Another car was sold for $130,000 without the seller being paid or informed, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
Prosecutors say the company’s vehicle dealer license was suspended by the California Department of Motor Vehicles in 2024 and that around 50 civil lawsuits had been filed against Doherty by the end of that year.
Along with custody, she has agreed to pay nearly $10 million in restitution to 66 people. Defense attorney Megan Foster noted in her sentencing papers that around 60 of those people fall outside the statute of limitations and so her client was not charged in connection with those individuals, yet she has agreed to make restitution payments to them.
Foster wrote that Doherty “enjoyed no personal enrichment” and was not living a lavish lifestyle like other perpetrators of fraud.
The defense attorney wrote that Doherty inherited millions of dollars in debt from her father after his passing, then made a series of misguided attempts to keep the family business afloat.
