The former manager of a Powell auto dealership has been ordered to serve a week in jail for reportedly stealing tens of thousands of dollars from the business and a customer in 2021 and 2022.

Vince A. Smith was charged with a felony count of theft in early 2024, as a lengthy Powell police investigation concluded that he’d stolen over $120,000 from Yellowstone Motors — including by funneling customers’ payments to his own bank account. However, as the case progressed, Smith provided evidence that he’d repaid most of the money and Park County prosecutors agreed to reduce the charge to misdemeanor theft.

In exchange, Smith pleaded guilty and agreed to serve a total of 10 days in jail: the three he served following his initial arrest in early 2024 plus seven additional days.

At a Tuesday sentencing hearing in Park County Circuit Court, Smith apologized for his actions. While saying he’d been influenced by medication he was taking at the time, Smith said he took “full responsibility” for the harm he caused.

“I violated trust that had been earned over a lifetime and I understand that no statement that I will make can undo that damage,” he said.

Circuit Court Judge Joey Darrah ordered Smith to pay $620 in court fines, fees and assessments while delaying a decision on how much the 60-year-old will need to pay back to Yellowstone Motors.

Smith had preliminarily agreed to pay $3,900 in restitution, but Yellowstone Motors owner Anthony Brownlee contended in court on Tuesday that the business is actually still owed $46,000.

“What’s before this court is a fraction of the damage that he [Smith] caused,” Brownlee added.

The court has scheduled a restitution hearing for next month.

Siphoning off customer funds

Smith started working as Yellowstone Motors’ general manager in the fall of 2019 and it was in the late summer of 2022 that the thefts came to light. Brownlee said the investigation was triggered in part by a call from a man in New York, who was friends with Smith and had arranged to purchase a 2022 Toyota 4Runner from the Powell dealership. Court records say that man, Ted Hirsch, paid a total of $48,650 for the new SUV. He initially received a damaged model and, after he returned that one, he never received a replacement.

Hirsch called Yellowstone Motors to complain about the botched sale, but “we had no record of it at the time,” Brownlee said.

The business would come to learn that, although Hirsch thought he’d paid the money to Yellowstone Motors, Smith had surreptitiously directed the customer’s wires into his own bank account.

Charging documents say a subsequent investigation by the business and Powell police found Smith had done the same thing with two other customers, who had wired over $60,000 into Smith’s account for a pair of vehicles. And in three other sales, Smith was alleged to have pocketed all or some of the customers’ cash payments, totaling around $8,900.

All of the incidents took place between December 2021 and August 2022.

After being confronted about the discrepancies, Smith reportedly came clean, telling Brownlee in a text that “this is so bad that even things that started out as fixable mistakes are ugly and criminal.”

In another message to his boss, Smith reportedly said he hoped the text conversation would “serve as evidence, proof and a written statement of my guilt for you to have for my prosecution if I make it to that day.”

“I don’t want to get a fluke juror or judge who feels compassion,” he added.

In October 2022, Smith and Brownlee went to the Powell police station together. Smith declined to speak about the thefts and invoked his right to an attorney, but “stated he knows he will be going to jail at some point,” Police Police Investigator Chris Wallace recounted in an affidavit.

After Wallace wrapped up his investigation, the Park County Attorney’s Office charged Smith in January 2024. Smith returned to the area the following month to turn himself in before being released on a $1,000 bond.

Disputed restitution

Though police concluded that Smith had stolen and owed over $121,000, that was hotly disputed by Smith’s attorney as the case got underway.

After subpoenaing payment records from Yellowstone Motors, defense attorney Brigita Krisjansons said she discovered that “lo and behold, in fact, my client had made significant payments while he was still employed there, paying back the bulk of it.”

Krisjansons and Deputy Park County Prosecuting Attorney Larry Eichele eventually agreed that Smith only owed $3,900 in restitution, but Brownlee objected to that figure ahead of a scheduled sentencing last fall.

At Tuesday’s hearing, Brownlee explained that the deal failed to account for the $48,650 that Hirsch — the customer in New York — had paid for the never-received 4Runner. After the sale fell apart, Hirsch had sued Yellowstone Motors in circuit court, arguing the dealership was vicariously liable for Smith’s fraud and needed to repay the money Smith had stolen.

Ultimately, Brownlee and Yellowstone Motors settled the suit in March 2024, agreeing to pay Hirsch $43,000. Brownlee contends that Smith should have to repay the dealership for the settlement.

However, Krisjansons expressed frustration that the details about the arrangement weren’t provided to her or the court until minutes before Tuesday’s hearing. She said she’d repeatedly asked for an updated restitution figure and had been waiting for it for months.

“We would actually object to that even being considered by this court,” Krisjansons said.

She said the figures didn’t make sense and asserted that Yellowstone Motors had made “many omissions, misstatements [and] corrections” over the course of the case; Eichele said he’d also had trouble getting information from the business.

Rather than issuing a decision on Tuesday, Judge Darrah said he wanted more time to go over the facts of a “complicated” situation — including the legalities of Yellowstone Motors potentially receiving restitution for money that was originally stolen from Hirsch. Over Krisjansons’ objection, Darrah scheduled a March 24 hearing to sort out the issue.

“That’s the only way I’m going to accept this plea deal,” Darrah said, saying it was important to resolve the restitution issue correctly.

The judge mentioned to Smith that, “you understand you could actually be going to prison.”

“I understand,” Smith agreed.

He expressed appreciation to both his attorney and Eichele for the plea deal.

‘The damage he caused is real’

In his allocution, Smith said he “hurt people who placed confidence in me, both professionally and personally,” specifically mentioning both Brownlee and Hirsch.

“I'm deeply ashamed of the position I put them in and the consequences they were forced to bear,” Smith said.

He also offered some context for his actions. Smith had entered a treatment facility after the thefts — charging documents suggest he had fallen into a gambling addiction — and said he learned that a medication he was taking for multiple sclerosis can cause “severe compulsive behavior.”

“The information helped me understand how I lost control, but it does not absolve me of responsibility,” Smith said Tuesday, saying he should have recognized the warning signs and sought help sooner.

He also said he’s tried to live differently and make amends since the thefts.

In his own remarks to the court, Brownlee said he hopes the incident has led Smith to turn a corner in his life, “but the damage he caused is real, and the cleanup has been immense and what’s before you is only a fraction [of that].”

He said Smith went outside of the Yellowstone Motors’ protocols and abused his leadership position to hide transactions.

Smith is currently living in New Jersey and, like all the other parties in Tuesday’s hearing, appeared in court remotely via video. He’s being allowed to serve his seven days of jail time at a detention center in Morris County, New Jersey, sometime within the next two months.

That jail time is being accompanied by six months of unsupervised probation. If Smith were to violate the law during that time period, he could be ordered to serve up to 50 additional days in jail.