“Good morning Guillaume, this is Brandon Belt,” the first baseman for the San Francisco Giants texted to Guillaume Chabin, the manager of Mercedes-Benz’s “hypercar” division.

It was Oct. 18, 2021, and Belt needed help. A fire at his home had torched some documents, including his contract to buy a custom Mercedes-AMG Project One for $2.5 million.

“We will prepare the documents and forward them to you,” Chabin texted back soon after.

But something was amiss. The man on the other end of the text chain was not Brandon Belt but Traveon Rogers, a fraudster now behind bars in Texas. Rogers then altered Belt’s contract, replacing the player’s name with his own and Belt’s company with Rogers’ company, to make it appear as if Rogers had hypercar build slots to sell, according to a federal search

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