After 14 Ford F-150s were stolen from holding lots in Detroit and sold with fake paperwork, customers, car stores, and title companies in Arizona are all fighting over the same thing. The Detroit Free Press says that Ford waited too long to report the trucks stolen, which let the thieves sell them legally and hurt everyone involved in the buying process. Police investigations show that the 2023 F-150s were left in various parking lots around metro Detroit with the keys inside, the doors unlocked, and no security cameras. The cars had the correct titles and registrations because, in 2007, many blank car titles were stolen in Georgia and taken to Arizona. Before the stolen trucks were sold to dealerships, they were titled at different title businesses. The thieves then used the blank titles to make authentic papers. How could they get the proper titles for trucks that had been stolen when they only had approved blank documents? It’s possible that the VINs were stolen. Ford has waited weeks or months before reporting the trucks stolen. When the police found out, the trucks had already been sold, named, and given to people who didn’t know they were stolen. When Ford told the cops, they could find out who owned the cars and where they were sold. This is where problems began for both customers and retailers, which is a shame. The cops raided Cascio Motors in Scottsdale, Arizona, on December 23, 2022, looking for four stolen trucks. Co-owner Addison Brown said that Cascio Motors paid an average of $65,000 for each car, even though they didn’t know if they had been stolen. Brown and Cascio Motors had to pay for the vehicles taken and stored in storage. “My cars were taken away, and I lost $300,000.” When you read the police records, you can see that this crime was looked into backward. Ford, at first, wouldn’t say if any cars had been stolen. “Ford doesn’t answer when people ask questions,” she told Freep. The police are also investigating whether these trucks were stolen from dealerships or title companies. A dealership in Arizona is charging Prompt Titles & Registrations in Phoenix for helping someone buy a stolen truck with a fake title. But because Ford had yet to report the car stolen, when the title office put its VIN into the system, it didn’t appear stolen. The owner of Prompt Titles, Michael Lorette, has since told his employees not to give titles for any 2022 or 2023 Ford F-150s. It needs to be clear how the thieves got titles, drove, and sold these trucks for almost 2,000 miles before they were reported stolen. Ford disagrees with Freep’s claim that the trucks were left unattended and unprotected. “The Free Press’s claim that Ford is somehow to blame when thieves sell stolen items to car dealers and customers, obviously with fake titles, doesn’t make any sense,” Ian Thibodeau, an employee at Ford, told The Drive. Product theft is a terrible fact that all manufacturers, like automakers and stores, must deal with. When we find out about thefts, we tell the police right away. Ford and other companies, as well as the naive customers who buy these cars, are the ones who are hurt by this situation.
