Inside the Ferrari Luxury Car Scam That Fooled the World.

It started with a simple, seductive promise.

A story of gleaming, high-end cars—Ferraris, Bentleys, Lamborghinis—whisked from the United States to eager new owners in Dubai, China, and Russia. Faraz Dar, a charismatic operator, painted a picture of a booming, lucrative business!

He told potential investors his company, Horizon Platinum LLC, was a major player in the global auto trade. All he needed was their cash to help cover the upfront costs of buying and shipping these exotic vehicles.

The returns he offered were staggering. Some “Investment Certificates” promised to double an investor’s money, or more, in just three or four months. For people looking to build a future, it sounded like the opportunity of a lifetime.

One of those people was a U.S. resident we’ll call Investor 2. Introduced to Dar through a relative, he was captivated by the pitch. Dar spoke of providing cars to the UAE’s royal family, making his business sound like a massive, unstoppable operation. The contracts looked official, stamped with a corporate seal from Massachusetts. Between June 2020 and September 2021, Investor 2 wired $120,000 to Horizon Platinum’s U.S. bank account.

He never saw a dime of it again.

A Global Empire Built on Thin Air

Here’s the thing about Horizon Platinum’s sprawling, international car export business: it didn’t exist. It was a ghost. A complete fiction spun up to lure in millions of dollars from unsuspecting investors.

The scheme was as simple as it was brazen.

Dar held court at social gatherings in his Dubai home, encouraging his new investors to recruit their own friends and family into the fold. He handed out impressive-looking certificates, signed and sealed, detailing the investment amount and its “projected maturation value”.

People from all over the world wired their money—their savings, their retirement funds, their hopes for a better life—to a Bank of America account registered in Massachusetts.

But the money wasn’t used to buy Audis or Bentleys. Federal law requires a detailed paper trail for any vehicle valued over $2,500 that leaves the country. U.S. Customs and Border Protection has no record of Dar or any of his companies—Horizon Platinum, HP Motors, or Limitless—ever exporting a single car.

Instead, bank records show the money flowing straight into Dar’s personal accounts.

While his investors dreamed of profits from phantom cars, Dar was using their funds to pay for luxury clothes, jewelry, travel, and golf supplies. When an investor’s certificate “matured,” Dar would either persuade them to “roll over” the principal and promised profit into a new, bigger investment, or he’d pay them off using money from a brand-new investor.

That’s a classic Ponzi scheme. And like all Ponzi schemes, the music was bound to stop.

A Trail of Broken Trust and Empty Bank Accounts

The excuses started trickling in around the time Dar relocated from the UAE to Turkey in 2022, changed his name to Osman Dar, and became a Turkish citizen. Suddenly, there were problems.

The cars were stuck in customs because of unpaid taxes, he claimed. COVID lockdowns in China were holding up payments. The war in Ukraine was preventing customers from paying.

It was all a lie, as you may have guessed.

By May 2023, the payments to investors stopped entirely.

The fallout has been devastating. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has identified six investors who are owed at least $2.5 million in principal alone—that doesn’t even count the massive profits they were promised. Across a network of over 30 investors worldwide, the total investments could be as high as $30 million.

Investor 2, who lost his entire $120,000, is just one story. Another, Investor 1, estimates he is personally owed around $438,000. These aren’t just numbers on a legal filing; they represent shattered dreams and financial ruin. They are the human cost of a con built on nothing more than charisma and a corporate seal.

How a Disaster Unfolded: A Timeline of the Phantom Car Scheme

The Bigger Picture: A System Primed for a Fall

It’s tempting to see Faraz Dar as just one bad apple. But that misses the point. His alleged scheme thrived in the cracks of a global financial system that makes it shockingly easy to create the illusion of legitimacy.

Think about it. \A company registered in Massachusetts, a bank account in the U.S. , solicitations in the UAE, and a founder who can simply relocate to Turkey when things get hot. This isn’t an accident; it’s a feature of a system where corporate shells can be created with minimal oversight and money can cross borders in the blink of an eye.

The promise of impossibly high returns is a powerful lure in an economy where traditional paths to financial security feel increasingly out of reach. Scammers don’t create that desire, they just exploit it.

Accountability from Afar

The SEC is now seeking to permanently bar Dar from selling securities and to force him and Horizon to pay back their ill-gotten gains. But what does justice really look like here?

Dar is currently residing in Istanbul. The legal battle to retrieve assets across international borders is notoriously complex and slow. For the dozens of investors who trusted him, the chance of seeing their money again is painfully slim.

The fines and court orders, while necessary, often feel like closing the barn door after the horses—and the money—have bolted. It’s a hollow victory for someone whose life savings vanished into funding someone else’s luxury lifestyle.

The Path Forward

This story is a brutal reminder that if an investment sounds too good to be true, it almost certainly is. The allure of getting rich quick is a timeless trap.

But beyond individual vigilance, this case screams for systemic change. We need stronger international cooperation to track and freeze stolen assets and more robust “know your customer” laws to prevent fraudsters from using legitimate banks as their personal piggy banks.

Until then, the playbook used by Faraz Dar will be run again and again. Another charismatic salesman will spin another glittering story, another set of official-looking documents will be printed, and another group of hopeful people will be left holding nothing but broken promises.

All factual claims in this article are sourced from the Securities and Exchange Commission’s complaint filed in the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts, Case 1:25-cv-12387, on August 28, 2025.

The SEC has a press release about this phantom car scam: https://www.sec.gov/enforcement-litigation/litigation-releases/lr-26386