When the loaner Mazda got stolen from a service customer’s workplace, the small-town Tennessee detective had one obvious suspect: the guy who’d just traded it in with a bad check. 

What nobody expected was that the “thief” was actually another dealership, the one that sold the Mazda in the first place. Their check bounced, too, so they tracked the car via GPS and repo’d it. The scammer’s scheme fell apart, not because anyone caught him, but because he tried to defraud two dealerships at the same time.

It is one of the wildest, unusually complex car scam stories, told by Chris Nelson, the general manager at Wolfcase Hyundai in Memphis.

How Did The Car Scam Start?

The way Nelson explained it, it was a usual Saturday, and a “young man walks in, early twenties, driving a 2025 Mazda CX-90 that’s worth—you know, it’s a fully loaded one, so it’s worth in the $55,000 range, something like that. He comes in, still has dropout tags on his Mazda.”

The customer has his eyes on the Hyundai Genesis. Nelson says a deal was worked out with little fanfare, but it was time to write the check for the difference of $20,000. Because it is a Saturday, the funds can’t be verified. In this case, he said, “every single check written, if we can’t verify the funds, call me.”

Nelson continued on, trying to understand what the deal was. “[I] ask about the trade-in because he’s trading the car in,” he said. “We don’t have a title yet because he just bought the car a couple weeks ago.”

But to this point, there’s really no issue. “Nobody blinks,” he said. “People trade cars they just bought often. We just needed to make sure the car was indeed paid for—that there wasn’t a lien on it.”

He asked the customer where he bought it, and was told it was from a dealership about 60 miles away, in Jackson, Tennessee.

Nelson couldn’t get his counterpart on the phone, but did reach a finance director at the Jackson dealership. 

“‘We ran the check through our verification check software. Check came back good. We released the car. We have our money. Don’t know if we’ve started the title paperwork yet, but we are good to go on our end. We have our money. He satisfied us,” he shared. 

Chris ends up going on the information given to him by the finance director and making the call to approve the sale.

The Scammer Wants To Buy Another Car

Monday comes around, and the young man calls to say he wants to buy a car for his brother. Chris’s salesperson consults with him. “I said, well, most people don’t come back to the scene of the crime,” he said. “I was like, you know what? I’m good with it.”

At this point, though, it’s 7:30 pm. “They couldn’t verify the funds,” he said of the new check. But more crucially: “And no one thought to pick up the phone and verify the check (the previous check) Monday morning.”

So, the young man was sold the second car with a check. But this time it was an unverified $60,000 check. Again, there’s no smoke that they can see. “Everything seems normal,” Chris said. “We have people buy multiple cars back-to-back. Young, old, doesn’t matter. People buy cars. That’s what we do for a living.”

Loaning Out The Mazda

The dealership had a service issue with a separate buyer in an unrelated situation, where they needed to provide a temporary loaner. So, they gave the person the 2025 Mazda, which the young man had just traded in.

‘This customer coincidentally owned a car, [and] signs a loan agreement like a rental agreement,” he said. “Your insurance covers it. She lives about 15 miles from town, Jackson. She lives in a smaller town outside of Jackson.”

Well, she took this car to work, and it was stolen. It was a big enough deal, and the town was small enough that it “shook the little town up,” Nelson said. “If it was in Memphis, we get stolen cars all the time. No big deal. We deal with it, move on.”

He reminded her that her insurance would cover the stolen car. But detectives from this small town called and asked if there was a second set of keys. He told them they didn’t have a second set.

“So he said, ‘What are the chances the person that gave you the trade had the car taken back?’”

Nelson said that he couldn’t speculate “because the customer paid cash for the car. Spoke to the dealership we bought it from. The check was good.”

We Have Two Checks That Didn’t Pass The Bank

“By Thursday, I get an email from my accounting department,” he continued. “And they said, ‘We have two checks that didn’t pass the bank.’”

He called the young man, who was taken off guard. He told him he needed either a wired payment or a cashier’s check. The young man promised a wire in short order.

In the meantime, Nelson called the bank to investigate the issue, as bounced checks are fairly uncommon these days.

“The funds are available there, but are not available to be released,’” the bank said.

“The money is there, but you won’t release it?’” Nelson asked. 

“Yes,” she said. 

“Can you explain why?’” Nelson requests. 

“No. That’s all I’m able to tell you,” she said. 

I Thought The Investigation was Done

He called the young man back and relayed the situation.

Nelson said the young told him something that shed immediate light on the ordeal. “I thought that investigation was done.”

“I said, “What investigation?” Nelson said he replied. “He said, ‘Like, I scam. But I’m not scamming you.’”

Because it wasn’t a scam, at least not these purchases. The plan, while still unknown to Chris, was to tie up the Mazda, then flip it legally into the two Genesis vehicles.

Nelson said he told him to just bring the car back. “He said, ‘Well, when do I get my trade-in back?’”

After some confusion, Nelson realized he was talking about the 2025 Mazda that was stolen in the small town. He tells the young man what occurred, but that “insurance will pay us and then reimburse you the amount that [he] traded in for.”

The first Genesis was returned, but “he can’t get his brother to bring the car back.”

Nelson issued a repossession order and recovered the other Genesis.

The Big Reveal In The Investigation

A month later, Nelson got a call from the detective in that small town, saying they figured out who stole the Mazda.

They had traced the car back to the Jackson, TN, dealership. The dealer who had the extra key went and tracked the Mazda.

Because the funds were never cleared (for the original Mazda), and the bank rejected the checks for the other Hyundais, “because it was tied to a fraudulent account under a fraudulent investigation.”

What the Jackson dealership did was repossess it “incorrectly,” per Nelson, because it was never called in. The detectives learned of the situation when the dealership informed them.

The Outcome

No one was out of a car in the end. The greedy young scammer was trying to tie the Mazda up with another dealer in an exploitation scam that didn’t work in his favor because he didn’t close out his initial scam.

How Did The Scammers Almost Get Away With It

The scammer weaponized timing:

1. Saturday purchases — Banks were closed, so the dealer couldn’t verify funds
2. Dealer-to-dealer trust — Chris called the Jackson, TN dealership, who said “we’re good” before their own check bounced
3. Monday evening — Same problem, no verification at 7:30 PM
4. Speed — Moved fast enough that the first bad check hadn’t surfaced before he hit the Memphis dealership
5. Mistake — The scammer thought the funds would be clear. He never ran with the cars or hid them. It appears that while the Mazda was a scam, the Hyundais were meant to be legit (though the cars were obtained through illegitimate means).

As This Type Of Scam Happened Before?

In Oklahoma City, 19-year-old Zachry Brent Baile had the smart idea to make bad transfers on two car loan accounts to make it seem like he owed much less than he really did.

In mid-April, Bailey, who faked being a medical professional, went to a local dealership with an Acura MDX. They ran the numbers, and it said that he only owed $1,713.23. They appraised the SUV at $48,000 and cut a $46,272.97 check for the difference.

A couple of weeks later, he came back to the dealership to sell a 2023 Toyota Tundra. The dealer again found that he owed a little on the loan, just $2,244. They cut him a check for $64,256.

Bailey’s scam involved fraudulent transfers that cut the loans’ payoff amount. The transfers were eventually reversed, and the loans returned to their actual amounts owed. Lenders won’t release a title until the lien is paid in full, so the dealer was left with two piles of debt.

Now this is the thing: Bailey had a long history of this. As a 17-year-old, he pretended to be a physician’s assistant to gain access to two hospitals in Corpus Christi, TX, for nearly two months. He did it to get scrubs, a badge, and equipment so he could look the part for various scams.

According to another news report, “Bailey also gave false information to obtain residency at an apartment complex, used bank fraud to purchase a $52,000 BMW, and stole $4,300 worth of jewelry from a Walmart.”

The Outcome

Bailey was caught and pleaded guilty to several counts of obtaining property by deception or false representation in the Oklahoma County District Court. But he was extradited back to Texas. Because he violated the terms of an earlier probation (the fake PA case), Bailey was sentenced to two five-year terms to run concurrently.

The Peanut Gallery

“I usually don’t stick around for long stories, but this was a good one!!!,” said a commenter.

One person in the comments wondered, “I thought if you pay more than 10k it raises a red flag.” Chris replied, “If it’s cash, yes. When you write a check, it’s on the financial institution to verify the funds are legitimate.”

Another person noted the real victim in this situation: “The woman who used the car as a loaner is out because now she has a ding against her insurance due to no fault of her own. I would be angry about that.”

MotorBiscuit reached out to Nelson via TikTok comment and to Hyundai via email.

@gmtopher GM Stories: How the scammers actually got away with the 2 cars! #cardealership #carsales #scammer #carbuyingtips ♬ original sound – GMtopher