Thieves Steal Car, Fix It, Clean It, Sell It

Most of us could stand to treat our vehicles a little better. Vacuum the carpet more often, change the oil a bit more frequently, patch that leak from the tire that’s just slow enough to not be worth dealing with. If you want top dollar for your car when you go to sell it, though, you’re going to need to deal with those pesky issues. Especially when it’s stolen.

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A group of thieves put their wrenching skills to use after stealing a Maxima, detailing the car and re-coding its keys before listing it on Facebook Marketplace — as well as replacing the window they smashed to steal the car in the first place. From Fox 13 Memphis:

Surveillance footage shows two vehicles pulling up to [Maxima owner Samantha] McCray’s home.

The thief busted out her car’s window and drove away in a matter of seconds.

…

McCray learned that within 24 hours of it being stolen, crooks fixed her broken window, detailed the car, re-programmed her key and sold it on Facebook Marketplace.

McCray did get her Maxima back, and it would likely have been in better condition than when she left it — except, of course, that the cops who recovered the car never told her it had been found. Instead, it sat at an impound lot, gathering dust and undoing all that detailing work the thieves had done. Again from Fox 13 Memphis:

McCray said she followed up with Memphis Police (MPD) about her car but was told to wait for an update.

“After a few days of letting them do their job,” she said, “I find out they have found my car, but never notified.”

…

To add insult to injury, McCray’s vehicle was not stored at MPD’s impound lot, where she was told storage fees would have been waived. Instead, Davenport Towing & Recovery had her car because the impound lot was full.

That forced McCray to shell out more than $300 to get her car back.

Perhaps the thieves could set up a repair and detail shop, since the whole “thieving” part seems to be what’s not working for them.