A Pottawatomie County judge on Friday denied an emergency injunction filed by the county sheriff in an effort to the stop the district attorney from selling five seized Ford Mustangs, meaning the scheduled car auction will proceed as planned at 10 a.m. Saturday, Feb. 8.

The five vehicles involved are 1970s era Ford Mustangs that are referred to as tribute or cloned vehicles, said Pottawatomie County District Attorney Allan Grubb.

The cars were among those seized during a 2016 raid and were owned by the late Kermit Milburn, a Shawnee attorney.

Milburn committed suicide at an Edmond gun range in 2016, archives show. His death occurred a couple weeks after authorities, while investigating a Mustang cloning operation in 2016, conducted search warrants at several places, including Milburn's home in Edmond and his Shawnee law office.

Grubb said five of the six Pottawatomie County cars in Saturday's auction are from the Milburn case, while the sixth vehicle was seized as part of another local case that involved a drug arrest. The cars are listed online as part of a large auction, which is set for 10 a.m. Saturday, Feb. 8 at FireLake Arena.

A three-hour hearing was held involving these cars on Friday after Sheriff Mike Booth filed a last-minute motion to intervene in the case. He said he asked for a temporary injunction to allow time to investigate whether the cloned Vehicle Identification Numbers had been properly removed as claimed.

The judge denied the injunction that would have stopped the sale, but did order documentation about the vehicles and their background.

Grubb said the five tribute/cloned cars involved have all been rebranded with new state-issued titles. Two other vehicles from the Milburn raid will be sold at a future auction, Grubb said.

The vehicles scheduled to be sold have been in storage since 2016.

Plans have been in the works to sell the vehicles for a while, with Grubb explaining that by statute, the jail will receive one-third of the proceeds from the sale. The district attorney's office gets another third, while the seizing agency, which happens to be the district attorney's office for these five vehicles, receives the remaining third.

Watch for updates.

View original post here:

Injunction denied: Auction of five tribute/cloned Ford Mustangs to proceed Feb 8 in Shawnee - Shawnee News Star