Learn how car dealers could unknowingly sell you stolen vehicles
By Brendan Keefe
Published: Feb. 17, 2025 at 1:02 PM CST|Updated: 15 hours ago
ATLANTA, Ga. (InvestigateTV) - Chidimma Okoro had no idea she was driving someone else’s 2017 Jeep Grand Cherokee.
She bought the vehicle from Honda South in Morrow, Georgia.
The dealership had sold her a stolen car, according to an investigation by the Georgia Department of Revenue.
A special agent with the state agency knocked on Okoro’s door just before New Year’s, demanding to inspect the SUV in her garage. South Fulton Police Department officers accompanied Special Agent C.M. O’Brien as backup.
“There’s a possibility that car is stolen,” O’Brien told Okoro, according to a South Fulton officer’s body camera.
“If it’s stolen, and you know about it, you will go to jail if you don’t cooperate. So you need to cooperate.”
Okoro said she bought the car from a dealership and had the paperwork to prove it. Police told her she had no choice but to hand over the keys. The single mother watched as police loaded her family’s SUV onto a tow truck. She and her three young children were suddenly stranded.
“I don’t know what to do,” Okoro said. “I don’t know who to talk to. I don’t know where to go. I don’t know who owes me what. I don’t know who I’m supposed to hold reliable for the situation. Nobody’s talking to me.”
O’Brien had called Okoro months earlier, but she ignored the investigator’s claims after she called Honda South. She said her salesperson assured her the title was legitimate and the dealership had not sold her a stolen car.
When O’Brien showed up at her new address in late December, he peeled back the sticker concealing the Grand Cherokee’s real Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) for a car stolen from New York.
Real titles. Fake VINs.
InvestigateTV discovered sophisticated thieves are able to generate realistic VINs that properly decode the correct make, model, and year of the stolen vehicle. They then use forged documents to obtain real car titles from state and county tag offices nationwide.
Laser-etched VIN plates are widely available online; InvestigateTV was able to order a plate with Okoro’s fake VIN for just $22, no questions asked. Anyone can also order build stickers with bar codes and whatever VIN they choose, closely matching the manufacturer’s sticker in the driver’s side door frame of most vehicles.
The National Insurance Crime Bureau has an online VIN Check service where buyers can see if the used car they’re purchasing was reported stolen or damaged in a flood.
VINs are also found etched in various locations of the car. The primary VIN is under the bottom of the windshield on the driver’s side; most also have a VIN plate in the engine compartment.
The only 100 percent fool-proof way to verify the VIN is to use an On-Board Diagnostics (OBD-II) scanner. The handheld devices are sold for less than $20 at Walmart and Amazon. The scanners can be used to learn any fault codes on the vehicle; see if any fault codes were recently cleared; and match the VIN to the one under the windshield or on the title.
‘It’s not your fault. It’s not our fault.’
Okoro called Honda South several times, including in the presence of InvestigateTV. Her calls were transferred to a full voicemail box. The dealer’s receptionist verified she had answered several calls from Okoro.
The dealership did not return calls from our investigators. A message about the stolen car was left on Honda South’s website, but the only representative to respond was a salesperson inquiring about a possible car purchase.
Our investigators went to the dealership in person. After asking for the general manager, a salesperson said he had left for the day.
Later, the dealership’s general manager met with Okoro and took full responsibility for selling the stolen car.
“It’s not your fault,” Honda South General Manager Troy Babayigit told Okoro, according to a recording Okoro made during their meeting. “It’s not our fault. All you did was just purchase a vehicle. It falls on us. We are going to take care of this.”
Babayigit said he would start the process of refunding Okoro’s money. The dealership provided her with a loaner SUV and paid her February car payment with the lender.
Babayigit told Okoro the title was legit, but fraudulently obtained by the previous owner. “This person purchased that vehicle somewhere in Alabama, or registered the vehicle in Alabama, and came over here and traded it in,” he said.
VIN swapping nationwide
InvestigateTV found multiple reports of dealerships unwittingly selling stolen cars in Georgia and beyond.
Police departments have seized vehicles from drivers who thought they had bought them legally, from California to New York and everywhere in between.
“The unsuspecting public doesn’t know that they purchased a stolen vehicle,” one police chief told an InvestigateTV affiliate reporter. “It will be impounded once law enforcement discovers that it’s stolen.”
Recovered vehicles are returned to their original owners or their insurance companies if the claims have already been paid.
Okoro’s wasn’t the only car seized on that same day in South Fulton. O’Brien and South Fulton officers impounded a Dodge Ram a few blocks away from a father who said he had purchased the car from a DeKalb County dealer.
Okoro, a single mother, said the crime had a major impact on her and her three small children. Before she got the loaner, she was spending $50 a day on Uber rides to drop her kids at school, and to get work as a nurse.
“I have my babies asking me, are we going to be okay?” Okoro said. “I don’t think my babies have seen me cry this much, because it’s so heartbreaking. It’s just a vehicle and I could just get another one, but what about what I’ve lost? What about the inconveniences of it, and who says I have the extra money to go back and get another one right now? Because I really don’t.”
Copyright 2025 Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
