Former owner of West Roxbury, Automile car dealerships sues over the millions he says he was screwed out of when they were sold

David Rosenberg, who once owned 30 car dealerships in New England and the Mid Atlantic, including Prime Toyota and Prime Honda in West Roxbury, this week sued over the way the company was sold.

Rosenberg's suit against David Gentile, filed in US District Court in Boston, comes five months before Gentile is scheduled for trial on fraud charges in Brooklyn over the way he allegedly lied to potential investors in the Prime Automotive Group after he and an investment group paid $235 million for a roughly 90% stake in the company in 2017 - a percentage that was later increased to about 93%.

That deal initially left Rosenberg in charge of the dealerships and, Rosenberg says, entitled him and Rosenberg family trusts to a part share in any proceeds should Gentile's group sell the company, which it did in 2021.

Gentile's group sold the dealerships to its current owners - who renamed the West Roxbury dealerships as Parkway Toyota and Parkway Honda - for a total of $880 million. At the time, Prime Automotive Group claimed $1.8 billion in annual revenues from selling 52,000 vehicles a year and providing repair and maintenance services. The company had 1,800 employees.

Rosenberg says his 2017 contract entitled him and his family trusts to a roughly 7.4% share of any "net cash flow," which means he says he is owed at least $37.1 million from the 2021 sale, based on its net cash flow value of $550 million. And he says he is also owed additional sums on the net cash flow of sales at the dealerships in between the time he alleges Gentile maneuvered to get him removed as both CEO and as a member of the company board in 2019.

Gentile and his group say Rosenberg lost his right to any additional income when it signed an agreement on Nov. 11, 2021 to buy out Rosenberg's remaining share for $30 million - to settle a lawsuit Rosenberg filed in state court - but Rosenberg said the company had not paid him for that when it announced its deal to sell the company just six days later, which he says means he was still a part owner of the company and therefore entitled to a share of the revenue from the sale.

Gentile and two others were indicted in January, 2021 on charges they lied to potential investors in the Prime dealerships about revenue sources, in part by promising monthly distributions that came not from dealership revenue but from money paid by investors themselves.

A judge in US District Court in Brooklyn has set a Feb. 6 status conference for Gentile and the other two men in advance of a scheduled trial date of June 3.

Innocent, etc.