STUART— A car dealership owner and a mechanic tried to turn back time on the cars the dealership was selling, according to the Martin County Sheriff’s Office. But they earned a time-out in the county jail instead.

Marc Plotnick, 49, and Charles R. Johns, 29, were both arrested by sheriff’s deputies today on charges of tampering with the odometers of at least 50 vehicles, a felony, said sheriff’s Capt. Ed Kirkpatrick.

Johns, the mechanic, was getting into the dashboards of the older cars being sold at Plotnick’s dealership, Plotty’s Discount Motors at 943 Northwest 16th Place north of the Roosevelt Bridge. Johns, acting on Plotnick’s orders, would turn back the miles on the odometer of the used cars that were sold at the lot, Kirkpatrick said.

Detectives started investigating the dealership earlier this month after receiving a tip from a concerned citizen. Investigators believe Plotnick has been turning back odometers on cars at his dealership for at almost three years. One car had more than 200,000 miles on it but was sold with an odometer claiming it had about 128,000 miles on it, Kirkpatrick said.

“They don’t have the best cars to start with and then the people get taken advantage of by having the odometer turned back and ending up buying a piece of junk that has more miles on it than they think,” Kirkpatrick said. “They’re getting duped two times.”

The National Highway Safety Traffic Safety Administration estimates that over 450,000 vehicles are sold each year with falsified odometer readings, according to a sheriff’s report.

Kirkpatrick said that the sheriff’s office would tow at least a dozen cars off the dealerships lots that investigators believe have falsified odometers. Plotnick and Johns were booked into the Martin County Jail.

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