by Brad Anderson
- A RAV4 was towed away because police discovered it was reported stolen.
- Craig and Hannah Blanchard purchased the Toyota from a seller in Dunedin.
- Even though the SUV has been seized, the girl’s parents are still paying for it.
For seven months, a 16-year-old in Florida had been happily driving a 2017 Toyota RAV4, a gift from her parents Craig and Hannah Blanchard. That teenage milestone of a first car ended with deputies from the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office hauling it off the driveway. Turns out it wasn’t a paperwork mix-up or a parking ticket, the RAV4 had been flagged as stolen.
Read: Man Buys Back His Stolen Civic Type-R Without Realizing It Was His Own
The parents purchased the RAV4 privately from Vasilios ‘Bill’ Ioannidis in Dunedin, who owns the local B&B Spyder Customs auto body shop. He had acquired the vehicle through a mechanic’s lien because the owner hadn’t paid for repairs done to it.
An Expensive Lesson
To afford the $17,000 SUV, the Blanchards tapped into their home equity loan and paid for it using cashier’s checks. Now that the police have seized the Toyota, they are still making payments on it and have to deal with ongoing insurance costs.
“It’s a payment on nothing,” Craig Blanchard told WFLA. “Who wants to do that every month, when I could be putting that money towards other things?”
Ioannidis declined to say how he obtained the title for the RAV4, though he denied having any knowledge of it being stolen. The title on the RAV4 has now been listed as ‘canceled’ by the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles. Ioannidis has told the family that if they can’t get the Toyota back, he will refund them for the full $17,000 they paid.
Buying a Used Car Privately
This case highlights the risk of buying a used car privately. While you can usually save a big chunk of money by this way, you aren’t afforded the same protections that you are from a licensed dealer. Paperwork mistakes, hidden histories, or, in this case, a stolen title can leave buyers footing the bill for a car they no longer own. For anyone considering a private purchase, it’s worth taking the extra steps to verify the VIN and title with the DMV and to run a detailed vehicle history report from services like Carfax before handing over the cash.
