Slicks Garage customer complaints pile up in Palmetto

PALMETTO -- The Palmetto Police Department has forwarded several complaints about Slicks Garage to the State Attorney's Office, and more people are ready to take their cases to authorities after one man got a court order to open the garage so he could retrieve his two Cadillacs.

Since September, three fraud complaints have been filed against Slicks Garage with the Palmetto Police Department, Chief Scott Tyler confirmed. The State's Attorney's Office is handling the investigation into the complaints, Tyler said.

"Although there's a criminal investigation I'm not saying he will be charged," Tyler said. "That's why the state's attorney is working on this."

Frank Barcellona, a Palm Harbor resident, is one of three people  who filed a complaint with the Palmetto Police Department. He took his 1955 Packard to Slicks Garage in 2012 and said his story mirrors that of Sean Roe, who had to get a court order to retrieve his cars.

"We decided on colors and upholstery and all of this and it was the same type of thing; work progressed really fast," Barcellona said. "I brought it there in May 2012 and within a month that car was torn down and stripped."

Barcellona said he paid $14,000 for the work upfront. Right now, he's in the process of gaining access to the garage to repossess his car, Barcellona said.

The investigation into Slicks Garage isn't contained to Palmetto, either. The Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services has an open investigation into Slicks Garage Miami LLC, confirmed department press secretary Aaron Keller. Agriculture and Consumer Services shut down the garage in Palmetto in August for an unpaid administrative fine stemming from failure to renew state registration. Slicks Garage paid the fine and was relicensed, Keller said in a Sept. 2 email.

Soon after the shutdown, owners Christian "Slick" Humphrey and Jane Hunter left Palmetto for Miami where they said they planned to open another garage and have been negotiating for a reality television show. Slicks Garage was at the center of a reality show on the Discovery Channel called "Highway to Sell."

The couple then put the Palmetto garage and "all of its contents" up for sale.

After Sean Roe got a court order to retrieve his cars, other former Slicks Garage customers called to complain their cars were locked inside the garage, too.

Half a dozen people have contacted the Herald with stories similar to Roe's.

On Tuesday, Roe, accompanied by Manatee County Sheriff's Office deputies, broke open the door to Slicks Garage in Palmetto to recover his two 1959 Cadillacs. Roe took legal action to gain access to the garage. According to Manatee County court documents, Slicks Garage failed "to make repairs and improvements to the vehicles as agreed."

Sylvia Schmidtetter, 75, and her husband Tom, 89, trusted Slicks Garage with their 1964 Mustang sedan. The car, a hobby of Tom's and Sylvia's, who said they were promised an expedited refinish on the car because of their age. The car was dropped off at Slicks Garage in Palmetto in December 2014. Tom ordered parts, labeled and boxed them and dropped the box of parts off with the car. The first payment the Schmidtetters made was $10,000 and a couple of months later they invested another $4,500.

They chose Slicks Garage for the car's restoration because it was close to home and they knew they could check on the car frequently. Many times when they visited, Sylvia said, the shop was closed and eventually they learned of Slicks Garage in Miami. When the Schmidtetters found out Slick had moved to Miami, they "felt doomed," Sylvia said.

"We've got a lot of loose parts over there and that's one of the things I'm concerned about," Tom said. "I have original seats and new covers and it's a matter of recovering all of that stuff."

In four months, Tom will be 90 years old. He said he wants the finished car in his garage in his lifetime.

Sylvia and Tom said they visited Slicks Garage after 7 p.m. Dec. 15 to check on the car after Slick told them a mechanic was working on it. They met a mechanic s working on the car and Sylvia said it looked like work was progressing "enough to give us a little confidence to back off on proceeding with a lawyer."

After seeing Roe's story come out, their concerns rose again.

Victor Baut said he is in a similar situation. He searched for a garage to work on his 1957 Cadillac and landed on Slicks Garage in Palmetto. He, too, visited the shop often to monitor progress on the car. The car, soon after it was received by Slicks Garage, was stripped down to almost nothing, Baut said. He made a $5,000 deposit on the work.

"Times were tough over there, I could tell," Baut said. "They said they were busy and couldn't get a good employee there."

Two years after he'd dropped the car off, Baut said, the only work completed on it was stripping it down to its frame.

"But then my car just kept sitting and sitting and sitting," he said.

 Eventually, Baut got his car back, but the interior was missing. He took it to another mechanic and "spent $2,000 fixing the work Slick did. He (the mechanic) said it looked like a shop-class project."

He's still working on replacing the interior, he said.

"When you do a project like that it's a thing of love," Baut said. "You understand you will put money in and never get it back but not the astronomical amount I put in with this guy."

 After the initial $5,000 investment, Baut was told Slicks Garage could do more work on the car but he needed to make an additional deposit, he said. He paid even more.

Edgar Tooley met Slick in Las Vegas and took his 1901 Oldsmobile to the garage in Palmetto for one of Slicks Garage's car shows about a year and a half ago. The car, reminiscent of a horse carriage, was built by one of Tooley's friends who has since passed away, he said. The last time Tooley talked to Slick was about five weeks ago, he said.

"I didn't think he was going to hurt me like this," Tooley said. "But every two weeks, he would tell me it's going to be another two weeks. Now I don't know what to do because my car is locked in their shop."

Slick and his lawyer, Jim Delgado of Kallins, Little & Delgado, could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

Janelle O'Dea, business reporter, can be reached at 941-745-7095 or follow her on Twitter@jayohday.

This story was originally published December 23, 2015 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Slicks Garage customer complaints pile up in Palmetto ."