An extensive fraud investigation into the former owner of the Columbus Sports & Imports auto consignment dealership continues to expand.

Police have identified more victims and federal agents have taken an interest in the case, authorities said Wednesday.

The suspect, 59-year-old Sama Duff Moore, had another bond hearing Wednesday where six people alleging she scammed them came to court to oppose her release on bond. They told Judge Arthur Smith III that she still had access to victims’ personal information and financial resources.

After hearing their testimony, Smith gave Moore a $100,000 bond on an identity theft charge for which no previous bond had been set. That brought her total bonds to $1.1 million on 53 felony counts involving 29 victims, so far, investigators said.

Among the six who came to court was Leah Cadora of Columbus, who after the hearing said she took Moore a 2006 Mercedes S350 with the car title to sell for her in 2017, and heard nothing from Moore afterward.

She left Moore her phone number, on the assumption Moore would call when someone wanted to buy the car. Cadora had assumed the car remained on the Sports & Imports lot at 1040 Veterans Parkway, but she never checked.

Then she heard about the police investigation.

“We did a title search when we heard all the things coming out about her,” Cadora said. “And sure enough, she had sold my car in 2021, didn’t tell me, forged my name, and then I reported it to Sgt. Edenfield.”

Police Sgt. Jane Edenfield is the lead financial crimes investigator on Moore’s case. Cadora contacted her around Thanksgiving, adding her name to the list of victims.

“I don’t even know the amount that she got for it,” Cadora said of her Mercedes.

“I’m really disgusted that someone would abuse their trust, when someone else is trusting them with that,” she said.

Edenfield said Wednesday that she has heard from four more victims, bringing the total to 33, and expects any additional charges to go straight to a grand jury for indictment.

“Every time I think I’m wrapping up, more victims come forward,” she told Judge Smith. Among them now are Moore’s husband and son, she said: Moore bounced a check buying a truck for her son, and opened bank accounts in her husband’s name without telling him.

Another victim, Cynthia Maisano Griffin, told Smith she paid Moore $27,000 for a car she never got.

Investigators said Moore began dispersing the funds and property she had upon learning she was under investigation, gifting some of it to relatives, and that has been difficult to track.

Edenfield said federal agents now are considering pursuing the case.

Moore’s attorney, Rod Skiff of LaGrange, said that his client was entitled to a “reasonable bond,” and that he had seen murder suspects held in jail for amounts lower than Moore’s. Assistant District Attorney James Crane countered that such comparisons were “irrelevant” in weighing whether Moore might flee from prosecution or commit other offenses.

Smith declined to lower the bonds he’d already set, but acknowledged Moore had been jailed long enough to have bonds set on all her charges, so she could be released, were she able to pay the total.

The judge set a follow-up hearing for April 25, in the event Moore still is being held then, and told Skiff he could seek bond reductions in court hearings on March 12 or 13.

Twists and turns

Police last year said Moore’s schemes were complicated, sometimes involving multiple uses of a single asset for fraud, such as taking out multiple loans on a single vehicle after changing its title.

While selling customers’ automobiles, Moore allegedly kept their payments for herself, or used their personal information and assets for additional theft, officers said. After Moore had a preliminary hearing in November, a man told police outside court that she had sold his car and never paid him.

Although he still had a title to vehicle, he could not recover it, because it still belonged to the buyer, officers told him: If he tried to retrieve it, he would be stealing it.

The police investigation began in the spring of last year, and continued to expand in the months to follow. Police got warrants for Moore’s arrest after searching the business last October. U.S. Marshals and Lee County sheriff’s deputies took her into custody at her Salem, Alabama home on Nov. 16, and she was extradited to Columbus the next day.

The number of charges and victims has continued to grow since then.

‘It has caused me a lot of anger.’ Alleged victim of Sports & Imports fraud speaks out

One of them is Ballarie Ingram, who after court Wednesday said she helped a nephew buy a car from Moore, before he decided he didn’t want the vehicle.

She told Moore the sale was off, and Moore told her it would be canceled, she said. Then she started getting notices that she was late making the car payments.

She was able to clear her credit upon submitting a fraud report to the bank, she said, but it still damaged her credit.

“It has caused me problems I never thought I’d have,” she said.

Police said one reason they got a deluge of calls from victims late last year is that Moore had made minimal payments on the loans she got, to make sure the people defrauded got no notices in the mail.

Her payments ceased after she was arrested, and that’s when those victims learned they had been scammed, officers said.