Sometimes you do your checks, you look in all the obvious places, and you still get scammed. That’s the lesson an Arizona man recently learned after he bought a used Ford Bronco that turned out to have actually been stolen.
As one of a shockingly large number of vehicles stolen off factory lots in and around Detroit, this Bronco ended up in the backyard of a buyer, identified only as Nick, most of the way across the country.
Nick found the Ford Bronco on Craigslist wearing Alaska plates, reports AZ Family. After contacting the sellers, Nick tried to do some due diligence to ensure that everything was on the level.
Read: How Thieves Stole $1M Worth Of New Ford F-150s In Detroit And Got Away With It
Before giving his $75,000 to the seller, he ran a Carfax check, which came back clean, and he also took the VIN to a third-party Motor Vehicle Division (MVD) location in Phoenix, which he assumed would flag any issues with the vehicle’s ownership history.
Unfortunately, what Nick didn’t know was that he had been deliberately given the wrong VIN, which led him and the MVD astray. Now, state agencies are criticizing these third-party locations for failing to do their due diligence in certain cases.
That was too little, too late for Nick, who was convinced that the low-mile Bronco was legitimate, and put down his money. Three weeks later, as he was trading it in for a pickup truck, a dealer employee noticed discrepancies with the vehicle’s VINs and called the police, as well as Nick.
“The dealership called. The general manager called,” he said. “He was like really pissed off and screaming at me on the phone.”
Now, the Bronco has been seized and Nick has turned over all the information he has, including some photos of the sellers, to police to help them in their case. However, for now, he’s still out the $75,000.