A Man Rented Out His White Toyota RAV4, But The Vehicle That Came Back Isn’t Even His And The Scam Gets So Much Worse

A Chicago man’s experience with a peer-to-peer car rental app turned into a complete nightmare that left him without his vehicle and dealing with a confusing mess. Chris rented out his white Toyota RAV4 through what appears to be a car-sharing app, but what came back was not his car at all.

The problem started when the woman who rented Chris’s vehicle decided to sell it instead of returning it. When Chris reported the missing car, the renter gave him a police report to explain what had happened. But the document was completely fake and had been made using ChatGPT.

“This is the car that they brought back. This is not my car,” Chris said in a TikTok video he posted online. The footage showed a badly damaged gray Toyota RAV4 with missing parts and a slanted tire, like it had been in a bad crash. The vehicle looked nothing like the white RAV4 he had rented out.

She Made One Big Mistake That Gave Her Away

The renter forgot to remove the GPS tracker that was still in Chris’s original vehicle. “She forgot to take out the tracker in the vehicle,” Chris explained in the video. Using the tracker, Chris was able to find out where the car really was, which was different from what the fake police report said.

“Once I found out that she was in Wisconsin the whole time, and she sold the vehicle to a gentleman who tried to register it in Wisconsin for about, like, $10 or $12 [thousand],” Chris said in his video. The buyer who bought the car tried to register it with the state but was arrested because the title was fake. “So he lost out on his 10, 12 [grand],” Chris added. The innocent buyer lost all his money in the process.

Things got even stranger when a tow truck brought the damaged gray RAV4 to Chris’s place. “I’m so confused on why the tow truck driver dropped this off,” Chris said in the video. He had no idea why this car was being dropped off at his location or who it actually belonged to. “As of right now, no further updates on where my real vehicle is at,” he said. The situation with the damaged vehicle being returned shows the risks car owners face when renting out their vehicles.

Chris had two ideas about what might have happened. “They probably really did sell him my white vehicle and just traded him this bogus vehicle. Or they kept the white vehicle and they traded the bogus. I’m confused on whose car this is,” he said.

Most peer-to-peer car rental apps have safety features like user checks, rating systems, and insurance coverage. According to The Zebra, Turo includes a standard $750,000 in coverage through Travelers with every host plan. But regular car insurance policies usually do not cover vehicles while they are being rented out through car-sharing services.