Police have discovered a lot of Ford F-150 pickups that had been stolen final 12 months from Ford Motor Co. holding tons in Michigan at dealerships and an auto public sale in Arizona.
The house owners of Cascio Motors, a used-vehicle retailer in Scottsdale, told the Detroit Free Press that officers raided the enterprise in December and took 4 vans. The shop paid a median of $65,000 for every of the pickups, which it didn’t notice had been stolen as a result of Ford had not reported them lacking.
“I am out $300,000, and my vans have been impounded,” Cascio co-owner Addison Brown instructed the Free Press. “Once you learn by the police studies, you possibly can see that this case was labored backwards. Ford didn’t initially report vans stolen. … If Ford would have executed a list test as soon as per week, to illustrate, and observed vehicles had been lacking, they might’ve needed to report them stolen, and people studies pop up all over the place — on a title search, on Carfax.”
It is not clear how the pickups disappeared in Michigan. Police consider some had been unlocked with the keys inside. It seems they had been pushed to Arizona and given clear titles utilizing clean types that had been stolen from Georgia in 2007.
A report from an Arizona Division of Transportation detective stated Ford believes it’s shedding about seven automobiles per week to theft.
No less than one title firm in Phoenix has stopped titling 2022 and 2023 F-150s after getting burned on a truck it processed in November.
“We get notification that we’re being sued by a vendor saying they purchased the brand-new pickup truck based mostly on our info, that we’re in cahoots with nonetheless this car is stolen,” Michael Lorette, proprietor of Immediate Titles & Registrations, instructed the Free Press. “If it had come up stolen within the system, being reported stolen, the transaction can be stopped.”
Ford spokesperson Ian Thibodeau stated he couldn’t touch upon why the automaker would delay reporting automobiles as stolen, citing ongoing investigations.
“Once we grow to be conscious of robberies, we promptly report the losses to legislation enforcement companies. … Actually, together with unsuspecting individuals who buy these automobiles, Ford and different firms are victims right here,” Thibodeau instructed the Free Press.
