America’s Most Manipulative Billionaire

America’s Most Manipulative Billionaire

The inside story of how Bob Brockman, the secretive billionaire who allegedly masterminded the nation's biggest tax-evasion scheme, used "Darth Vader“ contracts to overcharge auto dealers and financed Robert F. Smith's private equity empire.

Ever since Ford Motor Company began selling its Model T in 1908, few pieces of technology have been as important to car dealer profit margins as the DocuPad. 

The 45-by-29-inch flat screen sits atop a salesman's desk, giving him the ability to quickly coax customers through what would normally be mountains of paperwork. By enabling car buyers to check boxes with a stylus and sign contracts on the interactive screen, the DocuPad takes the friction out of a car salesman's stock in trade“”the upsell. 

In a 2019 court deposition, the secretive Robert Brockman, 79, whose enterprise software company, Reynolds and Reynolds, sells DocuPad, offered a rare peek into the microeconomics of car sales. Brockman said the DocuPad enabled finance managers to upsell by at least $200 per transaction in a business where margins on every car sold or leased are typically razor-thin. "You recover the initial cost of DocuPad very, very quickly,“ Brockman said, alluding to the $10,000 startup fee, plus an ongoing $1,000 monthly license. "And then, from