HOW TO GET A LUXURY SUV WHEN YOU DON'T HAVE THE MONEY TO PAY FOR IT

I think I’ll have a shot of tequila with a twist of lime and tip my glass to Tequila.

TEQUILA COLEMAN: LOVES FANCY SUVs, HATES PAYING FOR THEM
By John Nova Lomax

Houston Press Hair Balls
January 11, 2011

Apparently, Tequila Antwannette Coleman really, really, really digs luxury SUVs. They are the salt and lime in her life; without them, she is just not complete.

The trouble is, she seems to have trouble paying for them, and now the 31-year-old Houston woman is in hot water for acquiring her second dubiously obtained ride in the last ten years.

According to a report on file in the Harris County District Clerk's office, Coleman showed up at the Southwest Freeway CarMax and told an employee that she wanted to buy a 2005 Land Rover. She was told she could drive it away for $1,000 down and a balance of $24,000, and Coleman hastily scratched out a check and filled out a credit application.

Unfortunately for all involved, the check and the application are alleged to have been forgeries. Both were made out in the name of another woman -- a guard at the juvenile detention center downtown we'll call Betty -- and drawn on a nonexistent Chase bank account.

Police cracked the case when they tracked down Betty, who denied having purchased a Land Rover or owning the Chase bank account in question. Police showed Betty the driver's license Coleman used to back the check and open the $24,000 line of credit at CarMax. They already knew the license was shady, as the photo the DPS had on file was not the same woman as the one captured in CarMax's credit files. They just wanted to know if Betty could tell them who the woman on the license was.

She sure could: The portly woman pictured alongside Betty's information was Tequila Coleman -- her own sister-in-law.

And this was not Coleman's first rodeo. Back in 2003 she was convicted in an even ballsier SUV heist.

In that case, court documents state that on October 18, 2002, Coleman drove up to Talisman Auto Sales in a 2002 Chevy Malibu. She told the dealer she was interested in test-driving a $47,000 BMW X5. The dealer photocopied the driver's license she gave him, and then handed Coleman the key to the silver X5. He told her to wait just a second; after he finished with some business, the two of them would go for a spin.

Big mistake.

When the dealer returned, he found only a Tequila Coleman-shaped cloud of dust where he had left her. She and the X5 were, as Lightnin' Hopkins used to sing it, long gone like a turkey through the corn.

The cops later ran the VIN on the Malibu and discovered it was stolen. The driver's license bore another woman's name. It seemed like the perfect crime, but Coleman overlooked one detail -- her cellphone. After getting a grand jury subpoena, police were able to trace the phone calls Coleman had made to the dealer, and one of the numbers she used traced back to her boyfriend's mother. This older woman told police that while she did indeed pay the phone bills on that line, the phone was used by her son and Coleman. The woman also told police she had recently seen Coleman rolling around in a silver SUV, though she didn't know the make.

In February of '03 police finally tracked down Coleman. She told police that she once had a Malibu but that it was long gone. Cops apparently lacked the evidence to arrest her then, but they did ask her to come in and clear up their concerns about the X5. Coleman reneged on her promise to drop in for that conversation and hid out for several months.

In April of '03, police arrested her brother, whom they found behind the wheel of the X5. Coleman herself was not arrested until June of that year, and she would wind up getting sentenced to deferred adjudication. She violated the terms of her probation with some similar hijinks and wound up in prison for a couple of years.

And now she is back behind bars and facing felony charges of forgery and making a false statement to obtain credit. Total bond for the two cases is $30,000.

On her Facebook page, Coleman lists "Shopping" as her favorite activity. It might be ours too if we went about it with as much gangsta flair as Tequila Coleman. But somehow we tend to end up paying for what we take home...