An online car dealership operating under the name “Harber Motors” has been appearing to sell cars online, but the man who holds a dealer license for ‘Harber Motors,’ Mike Harber, says the dealership is not his, and he never launched any company to sell cars in Ellensburg.
Harber spoke to KIRO 7 Tuesday and said that while he does have rights to a company called ‘Harber Motors,’ he has not sold vehicles in years.
KIRO 7 has done some more investigation into ‘Harber Motors,’ speaking to one person who got suspicious about his car purchase. He had to call back tens of thousands of dollars he was willing to send to buy a truck.
Larry Simon is from Lake Charles, Louisiana, and says he almost lost more than $41,000.
He reached out to the real Mike Harber when he got suspicious and learned that his suspicions were well founded when the actual Mike Harber said the company is not his, he never started it, and until Simon had called him, he had never heard of ‘Harber Motors’ of Ellensburg.
Simon realized in talking to Mike Harber that the online site uses the name of Mike Harber, and while it lists a physical address in Ellensburg, Wash, online searches reveal that the site of the dealership has nothing but a warehouse on site. The warehouse appears on Google Street View and in map searches.
Simon spoke to KIRO 7 and said the deal for the truck seemed too good to be true.
He got cold feet during the transaction. He was able to recover his money.
He said, “I ended up getting every bit of my money back, and of course they don’t answer my phone calls anymore.”
He recounted that he was planning to fly to Ellensburg for the vehicle.
An online review by a poster named Ray Reyes detailed a similar experience. Simon saw Reyes’ review of Harber Motors on Google Reviews; Reyes claims he went to Ellensburg hoping to buy a vehicle, only to find that “Harber Motors” did not exist at the listed address. Reyes goes on to say that he went to a real dealership nearby and got help getting home from a friendly salesperson there.
KIRO 7 contacted that real dealership and spoke to a salesperson who said they remembered Reyes and confirmed helping him but did not want to elaborate on the incident any further than that.
Attempts to contact “Harber Motors” through the main number listed on its website resulted in a message stating, “your call cannot be completed as dialed.”
A subsequent call to a number Simon had used to speak with a salesperson initially connected, but the person stopped responding after the caller requested to speak with Jonathan Levi. Simon said Levi was the person he was talking to about the truck sale.
Multiple callback attempts by KIRO 7 were unanswered.
The Washington Department of Licensing (WA DOL) confirmed to reporters that the case is complex because someone used the name of a real licensed dealer without their knowledge. The buyers also did not know that the original “Harber Motors” was no longer truly active in the car sales market.
KIRO 7 contacted the office of the Washington Attorney General, and a spokesperson said that the office has not yet received any complaints regarding “Harber Motors.” A search for the business through the Better Business Bureau also yielded no results.
A Carfax report for the truck Simon intended to purchase showed it was a real vehicle matching the website’s specifications. However, a search by the vehicle’s identification number showed the vehicle’s sales history and indicated it was listed for sale in Virginia in December 2025 and subsequently purchased by someone in Pennsylvania in 2026.