Selling a car privately used to mean posting a sign in the window and waiting for someone to show up with a cashier’s check. Now it means broadcasting your location, your vehicle, and your availability to every stranger on the internet, including ones who show up with a gun instead of a down payment. A Colorado case that just wrapped up in federal court is a stark reminder of what that shift can mean for private sellers, particularly those listing luxury vehicles.
Alec Deschryver, 26, was sentenced earlier this month to 18 years in federal prison after pleading guilty to two counts of carjacking. Prosecutors said he had been specifically targeting luxury cars listed for sale on Facebook Marketplace, with Mercedes-Benz sellers in his crosshairs. The sentence comes after a two-incident spree in late 2023 that left one victim shot and permanently changed how law enforcement views the overlap between online car sales and violent crime.
District of Colorado U.S. Attorney Peter McNeilly prosecuted the case and described Deschryver as a “violent and determined criminal.” That description isn’t legal boilerplate. The case involved a coordinated pattern of behavior: Deschryver located sellers online, made contact through his own Facebook account, arranged meetings under the guise of a test drive, and then used a firearm to take the car by force. He did it more than once, targeting people who had no reason to believe the transaction was anything but routine.
What makes this case worth paying attention to goes beyond the sentence. Federal prosecutors and the ATF stepped in precisely because this wasn’t a one-off. The evidence gathered across both incidents, along with the cooperation of multiple agencies, illustrates that this kind of crime is neither rare nor improvised. It’s a pattern, and it’s one that private vehicle sellers across the country are increasingly encountering.
How the Carjacking Spree Unfolded
The first robbery took place in Loveland in October 2023, when Deschryver used his own Facebook account to set up a test drive meeting for a Mercedes sedan. The husband of the woman who had posted the listing went along for the drive and was carjacked at gunpoint. The vehicle was stolen without warning, mid-test drive, in what started as an entirely ordinary transaction.
A month later, Denver Police responded to a nearly identical situation, but this time the victim was shot in the thigh while removing a car seat from the back of the vehicle. That detail matters. The victim wasn’t confronting anyone or resisting. He was in the middle of an innocent task during what he believed was a legitimate meeting, and he was shot anyway. That victim was a young father attempting to sell the car to buy something better suited for winter driving and for getting his family around town.
How Federal Investigators Connected the Dots
Two incidents, two jurisdictions, and the same criminal. That connection didn’t come together on its own. ATF Special Agent in Charge Chris Ashbridge said his office became involved and helped bring the two cases together using surveillance video, online messages, and ballistics. That combination of evidence turned what looked like isolated local incidents into a single federal prosecution.
Ashbridge put it plainly: “We were able to take what may have appeared to be isolated incidents and connect them into a string of violent crimes.” The federal carjacking statute carries significantly heavier penalties than most state-level equivalents, which is part of why an 18-year sentence was on the table. Prosecuting across two incidents as a unified federal case also closed off the possibility of the cases being handled separately and resulting in lighter, potentially concurrent sentences.
This Is Not a Colorado Problem
It would be convenient to treat this as a regional anomaly, but the data doesn’t support that. Facebook Marketplace car sale carjackings have been documented in Illinois, Florida, Maryland, Georgia, Kansas City, and across many other states. In Osceola County, Florida, a BMW seller was forced out of his own car at gunpoint during a test drive arranged through the platform. In Gaithersburg, Maryland, sellers listing a BMW had a handgun pulled on them at their own home. In Chicago, a seller and her father were run over by the vehicle they were trying to sell after a prospective buyer produced a firearm during the meet-up.
The common thread in nearly all of these cases is the test drive. It is the moment of maximum vulnerability for a seller: a stranger has control of the car, the seller is either in the passenger seat or standing nearby, and refusing to hand over the keys at gunpoint is a calculation most people won’t make. Luxury vehicles and newer models add another layer of targeting logic for criminals, since the payoff for a successful theft is substantially higher.
What Sellers Can Do Before the Next Listing Goes Live
U.S. Attorney McNeilly warned directly that criminals are actively targeting online marketplaces and urged anyone conducting a vehicle sale to take precautions before meeting face to face. Those precautions are specific and actionable.
The most consistently recommended option is conducting meet-ups in the parking lot of a police station or a designated “safe exchange zone,” which many departments now formally establish for exactly this purpose. It doesn’t eliminate all risk, but it removes the isolation that makes these transactions attractive to criminals. Sellers should also avoid meeting alone, should share the buyer’s contact information with someone else beforehand, and should be cautious about test drives in general. Some sellers now insist on holding a cash deposit before handing over the keys, which filters out anyone whose interest isn’t genuine.
Verifying the buyer’s identity before meeting is also worth doing. Deschryver used his real Facebook account, which ultimately contributed to his identification and arrest. That won’t always be the case. Many buyers use throwaway profiles with minimal history, and a quick look at an account’s age and activity is a reasonable sanity check before agreeing to meet.
The 18-year sentence Deschryver received is a meaningful outcome for the victims and a clear signal from federal prosecutors that this category of crime will be handled at the highest available level when the evidence supports it. Whether it deters the next person running the same scheme through the same platform is a different question entirely, and one that private sellers would do well to factor into their approach before the next listing goes live.