Wyatts Towing has gone out of business.
The Denver-area towing giant — which has been investigated by the Colorado attorney general, accused by state legislators of breaking the law and targeted by hundreds of consumer complaints — has apparently been purchased by another local towing operator, Elite Towing.
Lawrence Pacheco, a spokesperson for the Colorado Attorney General’s Office, said Wyatts’ attorneys notified the department earlier this year about a change in ownership. He did not identify the buyer.
But on Tuesday, the phone number listed for Wyatts rang to Elite Towing. An operator who answered the phone said “Wyatts Towing no longer exists.”
Another operator, who declined to give their name, said Elite was taking over Wyatts’ properties.
Wyatts’ tow yard on Brighton Boulevard in north Denver showed a “permanently closed” tag on Google on Tuesday. A sign in front of the property says “building for lease, yard for lease.”
Management for Elite and Wyatts could not be reached for comment Tuesday.
In March, Wyatts owners sold off their tow companies in Georgia and Texas to a portfolio company.
Wyatts’ former chief executive officer, Trevor Forbes, now serves as co-CEO of Freestone Companies, a private investment partnership based in Greenwood Village. His co-CEO, Matt Phillips, previously served as president and chief operating officer for Wyatts’ parent company.
Forbes “led a successful exit in 2024,” according to his biography on his new company’s website, producing a more than 40% rate of return for shareholders. Company earnings grew six-fold during his tenure, he said.
Forbes remains on the board of Peak Auto Auctions, which he formed in 2019. The business — which bills itself as the “largest online auction platform in the towing industry” — works with towing companies to sell their unclaimed and abandoned vehicles.
Wyatts in December agreed to pay $1 million as part of a settlement with the Colorado Attorney General’s Office. A yearlong investigation from Phil Weiser’s office found the towing company hauled away thousands of vehicles without proper authorization, illegally kept consumer funds and engaged in “deceptive and unfair business practices” to discourage drivers from exercising their rights.
The majority of the settlement money — $764,000 — was earmarked to be returned to consumers. The AG’s office last week announced Coloradans will receive restitution checks in the near future, with amounts ranging from $75 to $164.
A clause in the settlement agreement states “all terms and conditions of this assurance shall continue in full force and effect on any successor, assignee or transferee of Wyatts.”
Wyatts’ exit from the market comes amid a rapidly changing legislative climate for towing operators in Colorado.
State lawmakers, repeatedly citing Wyatts’ business practices, have passed several laws in recent years to crack down on what they called predatory towing practices across the state. These changes included allowing vehicle owners to retrieve their cars from a tow yard if they pay a nominal fee, with the expectation that they can pay the rest of it over time.
Other recent law changes forbid towers from patrolling private lots looking for violators, and banned towing operators from authorizing their own tows.
All of these legislative actions targeted alleged practices by Wyatts.
Lawmakers last year accused the towing giant of skirting the 2022 “Towing Bill of Rights” by forcing consumers to take out loans, with interest, to retrieve their cars. Forbes said the company put these loans into effect to comply with consumer protection laws and denied charging interest.
The Public Utilities Commission, which regulates towing in Colorado, last year found Wyatts set up an email account for an apartment complex so the company could authorize its own tows in direct violation of state law.
A PUC investigator did not refer the matter to law enforcement, but said the argument could made that this “amounted to criminal fraud.”
Zach Neumann, co-founder and co-CEO of the Community Economic Defense Project, which represented people who had their cars towed by Wyatts, said the news points to accountability from government agencies “stepping up and taking action in the face of an extremely predatory company.”
“Today we see a predatory company exiting the market,” he said. “That’s a really positive sign.”
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