Tower Auto Mall and the leasing network

The company whose president manages CarToo in Los Angeles has been selling and financing cars to for-hire drivers in New York since 2006. What that business looks like from the driver's side is on the public record, in a 2017 investigation and in court decisions through 2026. None of it is a finding against any individual. All of it describes the product.

Tower Auto Mall

Documented Tower Auto Mall, Inc. is a used- and new-car dealer at 3110 Queens Boulevard, Long Island City, in business since May 2006, with a second location in the Bronx. It also trades as Tower West and Tower West Livery Center Corp. The BBB lists Ariel Tzur as president and Rafael Tsour as CEO. "Livery" is the New York term for for-hire vehicles, the cars that drive for Uber and the city's black-car bases under Taxi and Limousine Commission plates. A livery center sells and leases those cars to the drivers who operate them.

The 2017 Quartz investigation

Documented In June 2017, Quartz published an investigation by Alison Griswold into Uber's practice of referring New York drivers to third-party dealers for vehicles. Tower Auto Mall was one of four dealers Uber recommended. The piece follows a driver, Geovanie Rosario, who went to Tower in May 2016 and signed for a used Lincoln MKS:

Quartz identified CB Livery Leasing LLC as the financing company on the contract and Tower Auto Mall as the dealer and servicer. Rosario told the reporter that about a month in he got pneumonia, fell behind, and found the car remotely disabled; when he called, he was told, "You have to make a payment." That is his account as reported, not a court finding, and the article does not say who at the company made the decision. Uber told Quartz it was halting referrals to its New York third-party leasing program pending an audit. That was a program-wide pause, not a ban on Tower.

CB Livery Leasing and Ariel Tzur

Documented Two court records connect Tzur to the leasing company in the Quartz story. In a February 2023 affidavit in a Kings County case (Sudduth v. Winfield, Index 510474/2022), Tzur identified himself as manager of CB Livery Leasing LLC, said the company had leased and rented vehicles for more than eight years from several locations, and gave 1415 Cromwell Avenue in the Bronx as its principal office. We have seen the affidavit as reproduced by a court-records service; the original on the state's e-filing system is a verification target. In progress

In Leiba v. CB Livery Leasing LLC (Sup. Ct. N.Y. County, Index 151733/2023, decided March 11, 2026), the court refers to Tzur as a principal of CB Livery and discusses his affidavit about a leased vehicle's maintenance. CB Livery had asked to be dismissed from an injury case under the federal Graves Amendment, which shields vehicle lessors from liability based on ownership alone. The court denied the motion because the company's submissions did not adequately document the vehicle's maintenance. That is a ruling that the company had not yet proved its entitlement to summary judgment. It is not a finding that the company was negligent or that Tzur did anything wrong.

The 2025 federal case

Documented In Manuela v. Tower Auto Mall, Inc. (E.D.N.Y. No. 1:24-cv-07159, Nov. 5, 2025), a driver alleged that he applied in October 2023 to finance a 2022 Chevrolet Suburban on a form with a section headed "This Section For Uber Lease To Own Customers Only," paid a $1,000 down payment, was denied, and never got the deposit back or an explanation. The court dismissed his federal claims, with leave to amend two of them, and made no finding that Tower Auto Mall violated any law. What the opinion does supply is the court's description of the business: a dealer that "accepts no deposits and only provides loans for the purchase of its own goods," running a lease-to-own program for Uber drivers in 2023, six years after Quartz.

The affiliated leasing companies

Documented A 2024 Queens County commercial case, Tower Auto Mall, Inc. et al. v. Ben-Nany et al. (Index 713108/2024), lists five plaintiffs together: Tower Auto Mall, Inc.; Tower Management of N.Y., Inc.; CB Livery Leasing LLC; QLR Five LLC; and Venture Leasing LLC. Suing together shows a litigation alliance, not common ownership. The complaint's allegations against the defendants are contested and are not findings. What the caption shows is the shape of the New York side: a dealer, a management company, and three leasing entities operating as a group, the counterpart to the Munoz and Tzur chains at Mission Road.

"Tower Group"

Documented A publicly posted professional biography identifies Mai Kruvi as Chief of Staff at Tower Group, based in New York. It says she operates across three affiliated entities spanning fleet leasing, lease-to-own services, and commercial lending; credits her with launching a new entity in Los Angeles, an insurance transition covering about 4,000 drivers, and obtaining a California Financing Law license. The biography names none of the companies. We attribute all of it to her, and we treat the license claim as unverified: we could not identify a licensee, license number, or status in the state's public directories, and the absence of a match is not evidence that no license exists. The 4,000-driver figure is her description of an insurance project's scope, not a Tower EV headcount.

What this means for the Los Angeles lot

The Tzur-managed companies at Mission Road are not a car dealer that happens to rent to drivers. They are the Los Angeles presence of a business whose documented product, in 2016 and again in 2023, is weekly-payment vehicle financing for Uber drivers. CarToo's website publishes none of its terms. The parent business's terms were reported once, in one driver's contract, nine years ago. Whether CarToo's contracts resemble them is a question only a CarToo contract can answer. Read about CarToo.