Imagine the police come knocking at your door. They demand to inspect your car, telling you they suspect it is stolen. You protest, you bought it from a dealership. You actually double-check with the dealership that assures you your vehicle is legitimate. But the police inspect it anyway, declare it stolen, and haul it away on a tow truck. Now you’re stranded, not sure who is to blame.

This is a real dilemma Chidimma Okoro struggled with in late 2024. The Georgia Department of Revenue investigated her 2017 Jeep Grand Cherokee and suspected it had been stolen. It turns out the vehicle had been “VIN swapped.” That means that after someone stole it, they replaced every sticker and plate that bore its VIN with a fake one. The result could pass a CARFAX test and which reportedly fooled Honda South in Morrow, Georgia.

The police told Okoro “There’s a possibility that car is stolen.” The officer added, “If it’s stolen, and you know about it, you will go to jail if you don’t cooperate. So you need to cooperate.” So she let them in to examine the SUV. They peeled off the VIN stickers and found the numbers of a different Jeep, reported stolen in New York. By the end of the night, she and her children were watching as police loaded it onto a tow truck. They were stranded.

“I don’t know what to do,” Okoro said. She added, “I don’t know who to talk to. I don’t know where to go” She concluded, “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.”

The saga of the stolen Jeep Grand Cherokee

 Honda South General Manager Troy Babayigit told Okoro  “It’s not our fault.” He explained,  “This person purchased that vehicle somewhere in Alabama, or registered the vehicle in Alabama, and came over here and traded it in.” The vehicle was presumably VIN-swapped, then the thieves procured a legitimate Alabama title so the Georgia dealership would accept it as a trade-in.

Babayigit assured Okoro, “All you did was just purchase a vehicle. It falls on us. We are going to take care of this.” He promised to start the process of refunding her money. It’s good to hear the dealership that accepted and resold the stolen car is striving to make it right.

VIN swapping is a problem nationwide. InvestigateTV points out that you can purchase laser-etched VIN plates and VIN stickers online, to VIN-swap cars. It urges buyers to use the National Insurance Crime Bureau’s VIN-Check service online. You can also plug an OBD-II diagnostic scanner into a car’s computer to check its original VIN.