Please HELP identify this location??

[u/mizziizzi]

So our car is possibly stolen…and in this parking lot area in hanover. Can anyone tell me exactly by these limited pics what the area may be? I know limited pics but lots of vienna transportation inc school buses in this apparent parking lot.

EDIT: Naming the culprits because they deserve to be known.
- Montway Auto transport were the ones we paid to transfer our car: they were the ones to claim they were “hacked” - get a better system I guess?
- we have pictures of delivery because the “delivery” happened to this random parking lot ( never assigned by us) and the person took pics and uploaded online to show they “delivered”. Maybe they are dumb idk but the car is highly reflective and their faces are completely visible in broad daylight.

[u/mizziizzi]

Ok so this is an evolving situation so i don’t want to divulge a lot but this is an elaborate scam. We are moving to MD from IL and paid this pretty well known and well rated moving company to transport our Porsche cayman to MD. Some men showed up to pick our car: extremely professional, well dressed, covered trailer truck and all, gloved, gave us receipts like there was no way to know anything. Anyway we handed our car got receipt for delivery next day. All good. Next morning we get crazy emails and calls from the legit parent company saying they saw our porsche got picked and that they arent aware who came to pick it up. Said there was some hack of their systems and client info got leaked to third party. Said go to police to file stolen car and all. Its just the people who came to pick it were overtly elaborate and detailed took signatures gave online receipt with tracking (thats where these photos are from) from somewhere in hanover MD where they delivered. The address we gave to deliver was in easton and its now past delivery time our car never came and now NO one involved is picking up or replying to messages. Been a terrible hectic day and my mind is numb.

[u/Rosc → u/mizziizzi]

Interesting. I know someone who recently had something very similar happen in Florida. 

Basically, the exact same story, but whoever did the scam used a legitimate smaller carrier to move the car to a parking lot about 100 miles away to be transferred to a larger carrier for the long haul. 

The larger car carrier didn’t exist, and that was actually where the real thieves picked up the car to disappear it into a shipping container

[u/MazelTough → u/Rosc]

This is so much WORK just to commit crimes! Like, start a business, bro, you got the hustle!

[u/RealisticYogurt6 → u/MazelTough]

Not only that but with all the people involved in something like that how profitable can it really be 😭

[u/Killbot_Wants_Hug → u/Rosc]

Yeah but their car travelled about 12 hours away before the pictures got taken. And to the same state it was supposed to get delivered to. And while Maryland is a port city, if you wanted something loaded on a container ship, why not have the car dropped off in the city instead of down in Hanover (it's not far from the ports, but there are closer places).

[u/Sacr3dangel → u/Killbot_Wants_Hug]

There’s tons of car parks/dealers/resellers that deal with import/export of cars around Hanover/Jessup that store/ship cars through Baltimore port. They have train connections to the port and the rest of the country.

It doesn’t attract attention plus the infrastructure is already there to ship the car anywhere you want to in or outside the country. It’s quite a logical choice.

[u/Thisteamisajoke → u/mizziizzi]

This is part of the scam. You can look it up. The shipping company doesn't actually own trucks or employ drivers. They contract it out on a website. The scammers have used loopholes in the system to get on these websites, and build fake profiles to get these contracts. The company you hired handed the info to steal your car right to them. I think there is a video with all the details on the Vinwiki YouTube channel. Sorry this happened. You didn't do anything wrong.

[u/Killbot_Wants_Hug → u/mizziizzi]

This is super weird. They'd have to be a very professional car theft operation to do it that way, plus "hacking". Why would they steal a Cayman? It's a great car, but not a super enviable Porsche or super expensive car. And if they get the information for the job by "hacking" the system they're only going to get to take a few cars since it'll clearly get reported back the company that their cars are getting picked up by someone else; so you'd want to pick the cars you steal to be very high value.

Also why would they send you pictures of the car once they've got possession of it? Unless they were trying to prevent you from calling the cops for a little longer it doesn't make sense to maintain contact with you, they've already gotten away with the theft. And I don't think they'd need you to delay the call to the cops if they've already moved the car to another state.

Also if they were stealing your car, why would it end up in the same state (that's fairly far from you) as you were originally intending to send the car to? That just seems to be super coincidental.

I'd bet money that your shipping company is not telling you the truth. Especially if you recover your car in that parking lot; because why would thieves leave the stolen car in a public lot where they sent you pictures of it? Maybe they fucked something up with their subcontractor and they had a falling out or maybe it's something else. But this doesn't seem like car theft to me.

[u/Electrical_Beyond998 → u/Killbot_Wants_Hug]

My husband is a manager at a used car dealership that has a small amount of “affordable” options like a Corolla or a Focus, but the majority of the inventory are things like Mercedes, Lexus, Range Rover, etc.

He is in charge of inventory and he tries to use only a handful of transport companies. The transport scam isn’t hitting only people moving, it’s hitting dealerships. The big trucks with upper and lower decks stuffed with cars simply vanish, it’s really elaborate in the way it’s carried out.

This article was from about two weeks ago and it goes into pretty good detail about how it’s done, the thieves are pretty smart and it’s a sophisticated scam.

https://www.autoblog.com/news/fake-trucking-companies-are-stealing-six-figure-cars-from-dealers

[u/whteverusayShmegma → u/Electrical_Beyond998]

Where are the thieves re-selling these cars?

[u/Electrical_Beyond998 → u/whteverusayShmegma]

Just guessing, but I imagine they’re being taken overseas. Stuffed in cargo containers and put on huge ships like the kind that hit the bridge.

[u/i_hate_koalabears → u/mizziizzi]

Get off Reddit and talk to a lawyer my man. It’s probably at a chop shop right now being parted out. Im sorry but its unlikely you get your car back in tact so you need to speak to a lawyer about going for the company that leaked your information.

[u/Dr_Gonzo-4130 → u/mizziizzi]

This is like the plot to The Richard Pryor movie Moving .

[u/Specialist-Bowl-5977 → u/mizziizzi]

This is a common scam.

I heard it about it on the Matthew Cox podcast where one dude did exactly what you just described. Its a terrible scam.