Heather Wright/The Independent

Larry Grogan admits he didn’t pay enough attention to what Robert Bradshaw was doing.

That’s according to documents in a civil case in which Grogan asks the court to place 44 cars which were stolen and then resold back into his company’s name. 

The documents give a better idea of what may have led to the charges against Bradshaw, his common-law partner, Charlotte Johnston, and his friends, Gary LeBlanc and Michael McCrory. They all face multiple charges of theft, fraud, using forged documents and conspiracy. Their cases return to court for a preliminary hearing in November.

Documents from the civil case show the 81 year-old Watford classic car dealer met Bradshaw in 2020 when he called about a 1947 Mercury Convertible Grogan Ford had for sale. The pair agreed to a deal which included a trade-in from Bradshaw. Grogan told him he was looking for classic cars. It was the beginning of a business relationship with Bradshaw as the buyer; first for Grogan Ford, and then, after Larry left the Ford dealership, for Grogan Classics.

In his statement in the civil suit, Grogan says the company purchased more than 350 cars over three years through Bradshaw. But not all of them were delivered to Watford. 

“Bradshaw told me that the cars needed body work, needed to be painted or needed to have mechanical work performed before the cars would be ready to be picked up for delivery to Watford. He said he was arranging for such work to be done,” Grogan said in the statement. 

Bradshaw, he alleges, retained “most of the cars Grogan Ford had purchased in the Stirling area. Grogan Ford received a sufficient number of cars that I was not alarmed by the slow flow of cars to Watford.

“I did not pay enough attention to my dealings with Bradshaw.”

The first sign of the theft came in May 2023, when Grogan was transferring 300 ownerships from the Ford dealership to his new classic car venture. 

Service Ontario employees in Petrolia found that almost 100 of the cars were now in the names of up to 50 separate people; many, Grogan alleges, were in the names of Bradshaw and his associates, up to 50 of the ownerships had been transferred to classic car lovers who had unwittingly purchased the cars from Bradshaw

In September 2023, six months after opening Grogan Classics, Grogan went looking for more of his cars. He sent a driver to the Stirling barns where Bradshaw said the classics were stored and then to another shed in Caledon. Grogan says his cars weren’t there. Bradshaw stopped answering his emails.

The Grogans, worried about perceived links to motorcycle gangs and Bradshaw’s associates, didn’t talk to police until December 2023. 

May 14, 2024, the OPP raided Bradshaw’s building seizing 16 of the cars. Since then police in Ontario, Quebec and BC have been recovering the cars from the unwitting classic car owners. 

Grogan is now seeking a court order to reissue ownerships for those cars, so they can be sold again.