Former manager pleads guilty to defrauding Barre auto dealership

A former manager at a car dealership in Barre could go to prison for as long as 20 years for defrauding the business.

Robert McLane, 36, of Webster, Vermont has pleaded guilty to mail fraud, according to the Vermont U.S. Attorney’s Office. He admitted to defrauding his employer out of at least $575,000.

McLane was the director of parts and service at Formula Nissan. From January 2021 to September 2022, he ordered a large amount of parts that Formula Nissan paid for. Prosecutors say he sold the parts on Facebook Marketplace and pocketed the money.

McLane did not use the parts ordering system in Nissan’s dealer management software to order the parts he later sold. Because of this, the parts never appeared in Formula Nissan’s inventory records. Investigators say the buyers sent their payments to McLane’s personal PayPal account; McLane used the dealership’s FedEx account to ship the parts.