JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – A letter from the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office obtained by the News4JAX I-TEAM revealed ASAP Towing was permanently banned from JSO use in January 2024 following a JSO audit that found the company failed to report tens of thousands of dollars as required by state law.
Earlier this month, JSO raided ASAP’s four Jacksonville locations, serving warrants related to a theft and fraud investigation.
It appears a focus of the investigation is overages, which is the term for the money made from the sales of unclaimed vehicles, minus what it cost to tow and store the car. Overages are supposed to be posted to the Clerk of Court for safekeeping, so the vehicle’s owner can claim the proceeds from the sale.
The JSO letter shows ASAP failed to report $181,000 of overages in a timely manner in 2023.
If your car is towed, and you haven’t claimed it more than a month later, it could be sold in a public auction. At ASAP Towing, the company’s president and CEO Vince Serrano serves as auctioneer.
Records obtained by the I-TEAM show ASAP has been in trouble with the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office several times.
Last June, JSO suspended the company from its rotation of towing companies for a year after finding ASAP removed a dozen cars from apartment complexes without the complexes’ managers present, as required. ASAP filed a lawsuit claiming that a property manager can give permission remotely, but the JSO letter said in some cases, a representative of ASAP approved the tows without any authorization.
In October of 2023, an incident report shows the JSO Wrecker Regulation Unit uncovered tens of thousands of dollars in overages ASAP had failed to report.
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JSO says this was discovered when it audited all 11 of the companies on their Towing Operator’s List, including ASAP, which was suspended at the time.
In the letter from Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters addressed to Serrano in January, the sheriff wrote the audit found ASAP failed to report nearly $46,000 in overages over six months.
According to JSO, detectives interviewed Serrano about this in November, and he “admitted that he was embarrassed because he had fallen on hard times due to his divorce and made a mistake not making the deposits in a timely manner.”
He paid the money back and was given two weeks to deposit all the overages he owed.
When detectives went to the Clerk of Courts to verify the deposit in December, they found Serrano had deposited additional late overages totaling nearly $93,000, and a few days later, he deposited about $42,000 more late overages, bringing the total to about $181,000.
In the letter, JSO said it was permanently removing ASAP from its towing rotation because of Serrano’s “blatant disregard in” following JSO rules and “refusal” to follow state and local laws.
“JSO can no longer entrust ASAP Towing to provide a safe and dependable wrecker service to the JSO and the City of Jacksonville,” the sheriff wrote.
Serrano told the I-TEAM on Wednesday that his attorney has advised him not to comment.
The JSO audit also found another tow company had not paid overages for years and was suspended from JSO use for 90 days. A JSO spokesperson said the company has since paid back the overages and is back in the rotation.
Records show that company has paid about $65,000 in overages over the past two years. Over that same period, ASAP has paid more than $340,000 in overages.