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Court orders $4.5 million judgment against food truck builders for cheating customers

March 15, 2019

A Denver court has ordered two Colorado men accused of cheating customers who hired them to build custom food trucks to pay a combined $4.5 million in penalties and are permanently barred from participating in the food truck industry in Colorado, according to The Denver Post.

Rudy Martinez and Larry Perez were subject to a preliminary injunction in December after multiple customers accused them of under-delivering or failing to deliver trucks, the report said.

A Denver District Court judge ordered Perez to pay $3 million and Martinez $1.5 million, according to the office of Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser. 

The two men fabricated and sold food trucks under the company names, Brothers Custom Food Trucks and Denver Custom Food Trucks, according to state officials. The two accepted deposits and promised to build trucks with new equipment and fixtures to pass inspections.

State officials said the men frequently took much longer to deliver trucks than they promised and provided trucks with equipment that could not pass Denver Fire Department safety inspections. In some cases, the men failed to deliver trucks altogether.

The two men are not licensed automotive dealers and were known to "skip title" while building and selling trucks to evade government attention, the attorney general's office said.

During a February hearing, former customers testified. One Nebraska woman said she and her husband used their retirement money and moved to Colorado to purchase a truck from the two men for $35,000. The two never received the truck and ended up $70,000 in debt, according to the attorney general's office.

State officials said money collected from the two men will be sent to their victims.