New Jersey brothers sentenced to lengthy prison terms in stolen luxury car scheme

NEWARK, N.J. — Two New Jersey brothers were sentenced in federal court Wednesday to a combined prison term of more than 35 years for their roles in a conspiracy to ship stolen luxury cars overseas.

These sentences resulted from an investigation by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) assisted by the New Jersey State Police and local law enforcement.

Andrew Clarke, 43 of Irvington, New Jersey, and Llewellyn Clarke, 42 of North Plainfield, New Jersey, were sentenced to 300 and 195 months in prison, respectively. Both men were previously convicted on four counts of a superseding indictment charging them each with one count of conspiracy to transport stolen motor vehicles and three counts of transportation of stolen motor vehicles in interstate and foreign commerce. They were convicted following a three-week trial.

According to court records the stolen car exportation ring was investigated by a multi-agency task force led by HSI. The investigation revealed the Clarkes were purchasing stolen luxury cars from criminals operating in northern New Jersey and New York. The Clarke brothers then recruited other conspirators have fraudulent vehicle identification numbers placed on the cars to mask the fact that they were stolen, and then had false title documents produced for those cars in New Jersey and Georgia.

Once the fake documents were created, the Clarkes shipped several of those stolen cars, valued between $1.9 and $2.1 million, from New Jersey to Hong Kong, while other cars were shipped to Georgia, Maryland and elsewhere. Once overseas or out-of-state, the stolen cars were then resold, some to unsuspecting buyers who later learned that their vehicles were in fact stolen.