A former Girard car dealer and his finance manager will be sentenced in February.

Andy Gabler of Harborcreek and Chad Bednarski of Fairview were set to be sentenced on Jan. 6. However, sentencing for both has been rescheduled. Gabler is set to be sentenced on Feb. 11; Bednarski is to be sentenced Feb. 12, according to federal court documents.

Andy Gabler ran Lakeside Auto’s three area locations — Girard, Harborcreek and North East. Gabler and Bednarski, who was Gabler’s finance manager, pleaded guilty in September to a charge of fraud conspiracy in front of U.S. District Judge Susan Paradise Baxter, according to information provided by the U.S. Attorney’s Office Western District of Pennsylvania.

According to court documents, Gabler, as the owner of Lakeside Auto Sales and Lakeside Chevrolet, and Bednarski, as the finance manager of Lakeside Chevrolet, engaged in the following illegal activity between January 2015 and January 2019:

• Gabler falsely indicated that customers made down payments and falsified and inflated the income of customers when submitting auto loan applications to financial institutions on behalf of customers;

• Gabler caused extended warranties to be sold to customers buying vehicles at Lakeside Auto Sales and Lakeside Chevrolet and deliberately failed to remit the paperwork and payments to the extended warranty company;

• Gabler and Bednarski falsely reported vehicle sales to General Motors for vehicles that had not been sold in order to obtain expiring incentive rebates, and;

• Gabler and Bednarski deliberately did not inform S&T Bank when Lakeside Auto Sales and Lakeside Chevrolet sold a vehicle that the dealerships had purchased utilizing S&T Bank’s floor plan financing in order to delay and attempt to avoid the dealerships’ required payment to S&T Bank for the sold vehicles which had been purchased using S&T Bank’s floor plan financing.

Each could face up to 30 years in prison, a fine of up to $1 million and a maximum of three years on supervised release, according to court documents.

Pending sentencing, the court continued Gabler and Bednarski on bond.

Assistant United States Attorney Christian A. Trabold is prosecuting this case on behalf of the government.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Pennsylvania State Police conducted the investigation that led to the prosecution of Gabler and Bednarski.