Owners of Colorado tow truck companies indicted for $2.5 million in vehicle thefts

Two men are now in Denver jail and charged with 187 criminal counts regarding their leadership roles in a ring of alleged thefts of vehicles, forging of ownership documents, and predatory towing practices.

Oscar Salinas and Zaki Merhazi are accused of using friends and family members to accumulate approximately $2.5 million in total damages to private and commercial vehicle owners, dealerships, banks, insurance companies, and the State of Colorado. 

A Denver grand jury recently indicted Salinas, Merhazi, and 10 other people. Salinas and Merhazi was taken into custody last week and are Denver PD custody. 

The Denver District Attorney's Office announced the indictment Thursday. Those named in it include Moses Herrera (Salinas's brother), Kassandra Salinas (Oscar Salinas's sister), Gisselle Varela-Rocha (Oscar Salinas's girlfriend), Haley Gutierrez-Seib (Merhazi's girlfriend), along with Fernando Medina-Caraballo, Peter Swaab, Ronald Carreras, Albert Delgado, Ruben Martinez and Valentina Guzman.

All the defendants are between 23 and 30 years of age. 

A small number (six) of the criminals counts are the result of alleged towing incidents which occurred in March and April of this year. In those, Salinas, sometimes with his girlfriend, arrived at accident scenes with a tow truck and convinced drivers of damaged vehicles to allow him to haul the vehicles from the scene. 

Lesley Campos was one of those drivers. 

Campos told CBS Colorado she was approached by Salinas following an accident on Sheridan Blvd on March 20. Salinas told her he was notified of the crash by an "SOS" message from her phone. Those messages, however, are typically sent to emergency contacts and dispatch centers, not tow truck drivers. 

That was a detail Campos said she was sure of.

"The language they were using, I was just shocked," Campos said. "It sounded, the way they were talking to me, like they get away with this a lot."  

Campos said she allowed Salinas to hook up to her truck and pull it out of traffic, as desired by the responding police officers. But getting her truck off his hook proved more difficult, and Salinas talked her into letting him tow her truck from the crash scene.

That began a stressful weekend of exaggerated costs and early morning texts to negotiate the release of her truck from Salinas's storage yard. Salinas even showed up at her residence and demanded she give him the truck's title, signed, she said. The tow company demanded to be paid in cash and without a receipt in exchange, Campos said.   

Lastly, Salinas was told "I needed to be careful because they have contact in the police," she said. 

But she called the police herself. 

Campos believes her refusal to fold in the face of that pressure led to her getting her truck back for less than $1200. 

Other crash victims were asked to pay as much as $8,000 for the release of their vehicles, according to the indictment

Campos said she is participating in the group's prosecution. 

"This just isn't right...I'm glad they got what's coming to them."

Nearly all of the charges against the group involve the alleged forgery of vehicle registrations, titles, invoices, repossession statements, and power of attorney forms which fooled DMV and emissions personnel at locations throughout the Denver metro area. 

Using those allegedly falsified documents, the group was able to acquire ownership of a variety of vehicles: Several Dodge Chargers; multiple full-size pickup trucks; a Mercedez Benz C-Class, ML350, and S550; an Audi A4 and A5; an Alfa Romeo Stelvio; a Polaris Slingshot; a Hyundai Ioniq 6; a Chevrolet Corvette; a Cadillac Escalade; one Heartland Mallard travel trailer; two dump trailers; two tow trucks stolen from a dealership in Maimi, plus three others from a New Jersey dealership; and a Peterbilt semi tractor.  

Most notably, Salinas and a colleague, Albert Delgado, staged carjacking of a Lamborghini Urus at a gas station in Dallas in July 2025, according to the indictment. They had rented it from a luxury vehicle business. The car was brought to Colorado where the group members modified it - covering the car's white paint with black vinyl, and changing the wheels - in order to limit its easy detection by law enforcement. Salinas, per the indictment, gave the car to Merhazi, who had it for two months. The $184,000.00 vehicle has not been found since.  

At the same time, Salinas altered the vehicle identification (VIN) number on his own black 2015 Lamborghini Huracan, then staged and executed a false theft of the vehicle from his home in Lakewood. He then filed a claim for the $220,000 vehicle with his insurance company. The car was found a month later by investigators at Salinas's girlfriend's residence on Acoma Street in Denver. 

The group also took possession of a white Dodge Ram stolen (by as-yet unidentified suspects) from a convention center in Dallas, per the indictment. That truck, too, was wrapped in black vinyl and had the wheels swapped out. 

Additionally, Salinas and Herrera stole another Lamborghini Urus from a Cadillac dealership in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Once in Colorado, they wrapped the white car in tan and black vinyl, changed the wheels, and altered the VIN. The vehicle was recovered by investigators in front of Salinas's Lakewood home as Herrera was trying to relocate the vehicle -- using a stolen tow truck. 

The group operated for three years, between June 25, 2023, and September 30, 2026, according to the indictment. The towing businesses owned by Salinas were named Supreme Towing, On Time Towing, and Greg's Towing and Recovery, according to investigators. Meharzi businesses were called Denver Commercial Services and Blue Mountain Towing Ltd. and were based in Aurora.  

The investigation was lead by the Colorado Auto Theft Prevention Authority (CATPA) and its Colorado Metropolitan Auto Theft Task Force (C-MATT). The Denver DA's Office received significant assistance from the Colorado Department of Revenue's Division of Motor Vehicles, the Colorado Public Utilities Commission (the state agency with which tow truck companies are required to register), and the National Insurance Crime Bureau.   

This case is the result of thousands of hours of manpower and a one-year investigation put forth to protect the residents of Colorado from crime and harm, especially from those who hide behind the guise of a business or even a PUC number," stated CATPA Director Robert Force.

Meharzi, Herrera, and Gutierrez-Seib have hearings Friday in Denver District Court. Salinas is scheduled to appear Oct. 29.