Imagine you’re browsing Facebook Marketplace and find the perfect SUV for your growing family. You run a CARFAX report and get a green light. With interest rates high, you decide to empty your savings and buy the 2021 Chevy Suburban with cash. Only when you arrive at the DMV do you get the shock: the vehicle was stolen. This is the nightmare John and Michele Tibbs are living through. And they’re out $33,000.

Michele remembered, “We were on Facebook Marketplace, we had been looking for a couple of weeks, and we found a man who needed to sell his SUV.” The seller said he was in a hurry and would take less than market value.

He told them the vehicle was legit. But the Tibbs decided to do their homework anyway. “We went on CARFAX and we typed in the VIN, and everything checked out, even the color.” So the couple decided to buy the car. “We paid $33,000 cash.”

The Tibbs splurged on a deal that was too good to be true

When the couple went to the DMV to register their new ride, they hit the first speed bump. “The title, when they typed it in, it wasn’t matching. There wasn’t an actual title in Michigan.”

The Tibbs asked the police, who hooked an OBD reader up to the SUV’s computer. It wasn’t a 2021 Chevrolet Suburban. “That’s when we saw it was a 2023, with a different VIN.”

It looks like someone stole a newer SUV and “VIN swapped” it. That’s a car theft tactic that involves replacing the visible VIN plates with numbers from a vehicle with a clean title to fool a buyer.

Michele admits, “We were just shocked.”

The couple attempted to find the seller, but he’d disappeared. “It must have been a fake number, a burner phone.”

How to avoid buying a VIN-swapped car

You don’t need a police department’s OBD II reader to check the VIN of a vehicle. Any mechanic will have an OBD II reader. Any vehicle seller should allow you to get their used car inspected by your own mechanic.

Attorney Mike Simkas told ABC News, “You take the VIN from the internal computer, and you match it to the engine firewall or to the door or the windshield. Those should all match, as well as the registration and title.”

Simkas offered one more piece of advice on buying used cars: “But I always go back to the rule of, if it’s too good to be true, it’s probably too good to be true.”

As for the Tibbs, they contacted CARFAX, which has a buyback program for such vehicles. But CARFAX says they can’t do anything until the SUV is reported stolen. So in the meantime, the Tibbs must wait.