HOUSTON \u2013 A Houston-area man thought he had finally bought his dream car, a 2018 Camaro SS, only to learn four months later that the vehicle was stolen and allegedly sold through a Houston Police Department auction.<\/p>\n
Now the car has been impounded, the man is without transportation and authorities are investigating how the stolen vehicle ended up at a police auction and in the hands of an unsuspecting buyer.<\/p>\n
KPRC 2 News reporter Corley Peel spoke with the 20 year old buyer who asked to remain anonymous. He says he paid Sam\u2019s Auto Sales on Airline Drive $7,000 down and had been making monthly payments on the $25,000 car. Four months after the purchase, he attempted to trade the Camaro in at a different dealership, and that is when the problem was discovered.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey had told me that the car was VIN-swapped and it was registered as stolen,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
VIN swapping is when someone puts a fake or stolen vehicle identification number on a car to conceal its true identity or history.<\/p>\n
The manager at Sam\u2019s Auto Sales told Corley off camera that the dealership also did not know the vehicle was stolen. According to the manager, the dealership purchased the Camaro using the VIN number from an Houston Police auction, and HPD provided the title.<\/p>\n
HPD\u2019s website about auction information does not clearly state that every vehicle is checked against the national stolen vehicle database immediately before auction. HPD is now investigating the theft and tells KPRC 2 News the agency is looking into how the stolen vehicle made it through the auction. In the meantime, police have impounded the car,\u00a0 leaving the buyer without transportation and without his money.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m very devastated. I am very, very disappointed. I really thought it was a nice car. I had high hopes for it. And it just turned out to be something else,\u201d the buyer said.<\/p>\n
The manager at Sam\u2019s Auto Sales says roughly 90 percent of the cars they sell are purchased from HPD\u2019s auction. Since this incident, the dealership says it has started using an electronic device to check VIN numbers on all vehicles before purchase to verify they are not stolen. For buyers who find themselves in a similar situation, an attorney will discuss your legal options tonight at 9 p.m. on the KPRC 2 Plus stream.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 by KPRC Click2Houston – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HOUSTON \u2013 A Houston-area man thought he had finally bought his dream car, a 2018 Camaro SS, only…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":438274,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[11549,294,56,58,57,2543,9521],"class_list":["post-438273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-auction","tag-crime","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news","tag-houston-police-department","tag-stolen-car"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=438273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438273\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/438274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=438273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=438273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=438273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}