Amado Badillo Swindles Customer Out of Vehicle, Again

Forty-five-year-old Amado Badillo, owner of Prestige Auto Sales, has been charged with obtaining property by deception. His arrest came after Teresa Flores filed a report on December nineteenth. Badillo has faced similar accusations from unhappy customers who claim he took their money but didn’t deliver the vehicles they paid for. In January, a doctor from Caye Caulker took legal action against him for not delivering a 2020 Ford Ranger pickup, a deal worth sixty-five thousand dollars with Dimas Sansorez dating back to April 2023. Earlier today, Badillo appeared in the lower courts to face the latest charges. On December nineteenth, 2024, Teresa Flores, a thirty-five-year-old receptionist from Ladyville, went to the Crimes Investigation Branch at Queen Street Police Station. She reported that on November fourteenth, 2023, she got a call from Amado Badillo, someone she had known for over ten years. He offered her a black 2018 Ford Focus for fourteen thousand dollars. Flores said she gave eleven thousand dollars to Badillo’s driver, Raydon Popper, that same day. An hour later, she got confirmation and an electronic receipt from Badillo via WhatsApp. On November seventeenth, 2023, Badillo visited her workplace and took her to Holy Redeemer Credit Union, where she withdrew the remaining three thousand dollars and handed it to him. Badillo promised the car would arrive in Belize within two to three weeks, but it never did. Flores followed up with Badillo multiple times, including on December fifteenth and twenty-ninth, 2023, May eleventh and thirteenth, 2024, and October twentieth and twenty-fourth, 2024. Despite her efforts, she never received the car or her money back. Badillo, who was unrepresented, appeared this morning before the Chief Magistrate, where he was read a charge of obtaining property by deception. Badillo pleaded not guilty to obtaining property by deception and since the prosecutor had no objection to bail being offered to him, the Chief Magistrate granted him bail in the sum of ten thousand, plus one surety of the same amount or two sureties of five thousand dollars each. Conditions to his bail are that he must stay away from Flores; and he is not to be arrested and charged with any other offenses whilst out on bail. It was at this point that Badillo told the court that he would have to make one contact with Flores since she has a vehicle that belonged to him. According to Badillo he had given her a vehicle to use in the interim her vehicle arrived in Belize. The prosecutor then informed Badillo that he will have to have a third-party contact Flores or he will be in violation of his bail condition, and he will risk going to jail if found in violation of the conditions of his bail. Badillo’s next court date is set for February twenty-sixth, 2025.