Arizona thieves nab 29 luxury cars, to start rental business
I’ve previously written about the explosion in luxury and exotic car thefts. From a man slithering through a Miami Beach hotel to heist a valet-parked Rolls Royce, to the booming business built around shipping exotic cars to West Africa. But I’ve never heard of a theft ring quite this blatant.
The Arizona Department of Public Safety announced it finally busted a Phoenix-area car theft ring. The Arizona Vehicle Theft Task Force has recovered 29 stolen luxury vehicles. In total, they are worth about $2.5 million. The wildest part is they weren’t on a container ship destined for Ghana, or in pieces at a chop shop.
The suspects disassembled the vehicles enough to swap out their VINs. Then they used a source at the DMV to issue new registration for the luxury cars. Finally, they offered them up for rent on the “Turo” app. That’s right, you could plunk down $200 a day and cruise around town in this crew’s stolen Aston Martin or Rolls Royce.
What if the old owner spotted their stolen car? What if they accidentally rented one of them? These criminals took cocky to another level. And it looks like they got caught.
The task force arrested 29-year-old Ali Ahmad, 32-year-old Delia Rocha and 33-year-old Mario Garcia Rodriguez. It also recovered the stolen cars. No word on whether it can recover all the rental fees, it looks like the thugs funneled the money to accounts overseas.
“The theft ring operated with alarming speed and efficiency, stealing high-end vehicles, altering vehicle identification numbers, and listing the vehicles on Turo—a peer-to-peer car-sharing platform—for rental by unsuspecting customers within as little as one week of the initial theft.”
–ADPS
The Turo app assured customers, “Criminal behavior is extremely rare on our platform and we have zero tolerance for it.” It cited “This host’s insider access to the Arizona Department of Motor Vehicles” as the key to tricking Turo’s Trust and Safety Team. And in Turo’s defense, these criminals were tricking the government.