There are plenty of ways to negotiate the price of a used car, but secretly putting oil where it doesn’t belong certainly isn’t among the conventional options. The Placer County Sheriff’s Office says three brothers used exactly that trick as part of a vehicle fraud operation that involved making perfectly sellable cars appear to have serious mechanical problems.
Gabi Tanase, 23, Ionut Tanase, 34, and Marius Tanase, 28, were arrested in May after an encounter with a Placer County resident who was trying to sell a vehicle, according to a May 5, 2026 post by Butte County Fires, Accidents, Crimes (BCFAC News) on Facebook. Deputies say the brothers attempted to make the car appear mechanically compromised, but the seller became suspicious, refused to complete the sale, and contacted law enforcement.
Detectives say that the call ultimately exposed a much larger operation involving sellers advertising vehicles through platforms including Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist. The scheme involved posing as interested buyers before secretly tampering with vehicles during test drives while their owners were distracted.
According to the sheriff’s office, oil would be placed in areas including a vehicle’s coolant reservoir or tailpipe so it would burn and produce smoke when the car was driven. That sudden “mechanical problem” could then be used to pressure the owner into accepting substantially less money for a vehicle that could later be resold at its full value.
One Suspicious Seller Helps Uncover Larger Vehicle Scam
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The Placer County Sheriff’s Office credits the seller who refused to go through with the transaction with helping detectives uncover the wider operation. Investigators eventually identified multiple victims and determined that at least one vehicle obtained through the scheme had already changed hands again.
By the time detectives located that vehicle, the brothers had sold it to an unsuspecting family for $12,000. Investigators seized the vehicle as part of the case, leaving the family without the vehicle they had purchased, despite having no involvement in the original fraud.
Detectives also located more than $33,000 in cash during their investigation and seized it as evidence. The sheriff’s office says all three Tanase brothers have since pleaded guilty to crimes connected to the case, including elder fraud.
Detectives Return $12,000 to Family That Bought Vehicle
While seizing the vehicle resolved one part of the investigation, it created another problem for the family that had paid $12,000 for it without knowing how it had been obtained. Detectives subsequently worked to recover the family’s money from the cash seized during the investigation.
The sheriff’s office announced this week that the full $12,000 had been returned, with detectives meeting with the family to ensure the money was returned safely to their hands. The department declined to identify the family out of respect for their privacy.
What began with one seller becoming suspicious of a conveniently timed mechanical problem ultimately led detectives to an operation that had affected multiple victims. It also made the seller’s decision to walk away particularly consequential, since deputies say the call to law enforcement helped expose what was happening in the first place.
Additional information was searched for on the Place County Sheriff’s Office public inmate search, but records have since been removed. All suspects are considered innocent unless proven guilty in a court of law.