Nobody wants to buy a car and then find out it might have been stolen, but for one man, it looks like exactly that happened. This man, who owns a dealership, has expressed a lot of outrage on TikTok after learning that a car he purchased from another dealership was actually a stolen car.
TikTok creator PSYchoa (@isaianyeq4r) reposted a clip from YouTuber and car dealer George J. Saliba, who owns the New Jersey dealership J&H Autohaus. The clip shared by the TikTok account shows Saliba and his team going to an employee from a fellow dealership.
The clip shows Saliba confronting the employee and claiming that they had been sold a stolen car by this dealership, which has now been seized by the police. As you might expect, Saliba would like to get his money back, if nothing more than to cover the inconvenience caused.
Unfortunately for the crew, getting the money back wasn’t as easy as they had hoped. In fact, it seemed like the dealership that the car had been bought from was adamant that they were not going to give the money back. So Saliba and his team had to get a bit stubborn.
How the Dealership Confronted Those Who Sold Him the Car
The full YouTube video explores exactly what happened. Saliba and his team rang the dealership to explain the situation to them. The car that his team had bought was soon found to be stolen, meaning the police had to come and seize it. It meant Saliba had lost out financially, as he would get no return on the money he had spent buying the car. Naturally, he wasn’t happy.
The other dealership claimed they had no idea the car was stolen, and they didn’t want to take financial responsibility for it. They were refusing to refund Saliba and his dealership. “You’re gonna send us the money back for sending us a stolen vehicle,” Saliba insisted in the clip. The dealership, however, fired back, saying, “We’re a victim of the same thing.”
That didn’t convince Saliba and his team. They claimed the car was knowingly sold to them as stolen, despite being told it was good. It also meant the car had been fraudulently titled. It might sound baffling, but Saliba was able to break down how they worked out that the car was stolen, and it all came down to the car’s VIN and the fake title it had been given.
How the Dealership Found Out the Car Had Been Stolen
It didn’t take long for Saliba to work out how the car had been stolen. He said it arrived from the other dealership, and not long after, he realized the VIN had been swapped, and it had a forged title. The vehicle identification number had been moved from one car to another, which is of course illegal. But it bought someone time to sell it on before the change was noticed by authorities.
Getting money back on the car was never going to be easy for Saliba. If it is proven a car has a counterfeit VIN and a forged title, the car will be seized, and then taken back to whoever legally owns it. That means the buyer is out of pocket, even if they bought the car not knowing it had been stolen. Things might be different, however, if Saliba had been able to prove that the dealership he bought the car from knew that it had been stolen beforehand.