- Steven James Jackson, owner of Lindon business Land Cruisers Direct, pleaded guilty to fraud and admitted to not delivering vehicles.
- Jackson received probation with suspended prison sentences and agreed repay thousands to victims.
PROVO — A Pleasant Grove man who pleaded guilty to fraudulent behavior in multiple court cases will spend the next three years on probation and pay back thousands of dollars to some of the people he acknowledged he had scammed.
Steven James Jackson, in his position as owner of Land Cruisers Direct in Lindon, a company that sells rare 4x4s, was charged multiple times after customers claimed he did not deliver items that were purchased.
He admitted on May 8 to theft by deception, a third-degree felony, for not delivering a 1960 Toyota FJ24 Fire Truck worth over $21,000, as promised to the Land Cruiser Heritage Museum in Salt Lake County. He also admitted to keeping a Land Cruiser he agreed to repair for 16 months without repairing it, pleading guilty to wrongful appropriation, a third-degree felony.
Jackson, 49, also admitted to possession or use of heroin and theft, both class B misdemeanors. For the theft charge, he admitted that he had kept a moving truck he rented for months without returning it.
He pleaded guilty under a plea deal that dismissed four separate cases totaling nine second- and third-degree felonies, and dismissed 12 felonies and three misdemeanors in the four cases where he pleaded guilty to one charge each.
As part of the plea deal, Jackson agreed to pay $12,000 to the Land Cruiser museum, in addition to almost $12,000 in total to total victims in three other cases. He also agreed to pay back money in two other cases, but the amounts are not yet set.
Jackson was sentenced on June 19 to two terms of zero to five years in prison for the third-degree felonies and two terms of one year in jail for the misdemeanors, with credit for the 172 days he spent in jail. Those sentences were suspended, and he will not be required to serve them if he follows probation conditions for three years.
Some of his unique probation requirements include taking theft reform course, substance abuse treatment and a restriction that he is not allowed to work in a situation where he controls others' financial accounts.
