Most of the time when a tow truck shows up on the shoulder, it’s there to help a stranded driver out of a bad day. But for months on Denver-area highways, one driver turned that goodwill on its head. He wasn’t rescuing anyone. He was quietly hauling away other people’s cars and selling them for scrap before anyone even realized they were gone.

Prosecutors say 38-year-old Brian Chacon built a small but effective criminal business around his tow truck scheme

Between 2023 and 2024, he stole around 50 known vehicles.

Chacon recently pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 16 years in prison. That happened after investigators unraveled how he managed to snatch cars in plain sight and turn them into quick cash.

Chacon targeted a very specific kind of vehicle

Older, broken-down cars that had been left along the shoulder after a mechanical failure seemed his “perfect target.”

They were often owned by people with limited resources who couldn’t afford an immediate tow. 

That delay created the window Chacon needed. He would pull up in a tow truck, hook up the car, and haul it off under the assumption that no one would question the rig “doing its job.”

By the time the owner returned or arranged for their own tow, the car was gone and Chacon was already cashing in.

According to investigators, Chacon sold the stolen vehicles to salvage yards, often for a few hundred dollars apiece

He took advantage of loopholes in state regulations that make it surprisingly easy to offload a vehicle without a title.

Tow operators are allowed to sign a simple bill of sale stating they own the vehicle. In turn, salvage yards are only required to run the VIN once (when they buy the car).

That meant if a car hadn’t yet been reported stolen at the time of purchase, it would slip through the system. Once it was on the lot, the yard wasn’t required to check the VIN again before dismantling or crushing it.

Those weak spots in the system let Chacon move fast.

By the time many victims filed theft reports, their cars were already stripped down or gone entirely

One of those vehicles was a family minivan belonging to Fort Lupton resident Gina Matrious. She explained that losing the car created a ripple effect that disrupted her entire household.

The break in the case came when Douglas County sheriff’s deputies noticed a stolen vehicle on the back of a tow truck

A GPS tracker later placed on Chacon’s truck helped investigators trace his movements. 

License plate-reading Flock cameras connected him to a long list of missing vehicles. Detectives described the result as a large-scale, calculated operation hiding in plain sight.

The case reveals a deeper problem in how Colorado regulates towing and salvage sales

Prosecutors pointed out that if the rules required more rigorous proof of ownership or repeated VIN checks before vehicles were scrapped, Chacon’s scheme would have been much harder to pull off.

Instead, a loophole meant to make legitimate business easier ended up giving one tow truck driver all the cover he needed to turn dozens of stolen cars into cash.