A group of thieves may be cheating people in Southern California out of thousands of dollars by sabotaging their cars in order to trick victims into selling the vehicles for a lower price.
Surveillance video captured the group of three apparently tampering with the engine of an SUV that a Corona man was selling. At least one other man said the trio swindled him out of thousands of dollars too.
Art Hernandez recently advertised his 2002 Toyota Highlander for $3,000 on Craigslist. "I was meticulous about keeping up on the maintenance records. The thing ran great,” he said.
Three men quickly answered his ad, but when they showed up at his Corona home, Hernandez said something strange happened: the car began leaking oil, the “check engine” light came on and the vehicle was barely drivable.
Get top local stories in Southern California delivered to you every morning. Sign up for NBC LA's News Headlines newsletter.
“The guy says, ‘Look’ – he's pointing down at the oil spill – he says something happened. So, we open up the hood and sure enough, the car is juts smoking and and there is oil all over the top,” Hernandez said.
Shocked, Hernandez couldn’t understand what happened to his SUV, which he said was running perfectly fine before the men showed up. It wasn’t until he looked at his surveillance video that he said he realized the three men had sabotaged his engine.
Hernandez said that after opening the hood, one man told him to go to the back of the SUV to look at something.
"Well, these other guys in the front – one goes and unsnaps the engine coolant reservoir, that plastic reservoir, and then the guy with the gray shirt, you can see him in the video, he reaches into his pocket; he pulls out a bottle of oil,” Hernandez said. "And you could see him going over and pouring inside the coolant reservoir, and then he reaches over and then he pours it on the engine.”
Local
Get Los Angeles's latest local news on crime, entertainment, weather, schools, COVID, cost of living and more. Here's your go-to source for today's LA news.
It didn’t stop there. Hernandez said one of the men also reached back into the engine compartment and disconnected some electronics, which he suspects is what caused his “check engine” light to turn on.
Hernandez said the men told him the engine must have been blown, but they still wanted to buy the Highlander for $400, since one of them said he was a mechanic and could fix the issue. That, Hernandez said, should have been a red flag.
After realizing he’d been duped, Hernandez said, he posted pictures of the men on Craigslist all over Southern California and got calls from other people claiming the same men did the same thing to them.
Carlos Salazar, who lives in Chatsworth, said he was one of those other victims. “I lost a lot of money – same as this guy,” Salazar said.
Salazar said the same men cheated him out of $3,000. He showed a picture of one of the men, who was an arm tattoo similar to the man in Hernandez’s surveillance video.
Hernandez gave that video and the Arizona plate number of the minivan the men were driving to Corona police, hoping they will eventually be arrested.
"They need to go to jail. They need some serious consequences because they are out there right now,” Hernandez said.
Any other potential victims are asked to contact Corona police.
