A New Jersey car dealer is speaking out after police seized a BMW X6 he had just bought, telling him the luxury SUV was stolen. George Saliba, who works at JS Autohaus in Ewing, New Jersey, bought the car from Prime Motors LLC, a Virginia dealership, in a standard dealer-to-dealer deal. Everything seemed normal until the car arrived at his lot.
“We got the car here, and the car hit our inventory, hit our lot. It was then confiscated by the police because this was a stolen vehicle,” Saliba said in a TikTok video that got over 673,000 views on his 1.2 million-follower account.
Under the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC), a person who buys a stolen vehicle does not legally own it, even if they had no idea it was stolen. However, Motor1 says the UCC also protects buyers like Saliba. When one dealer sells a car to another, there is an implied guarantee that the title is valid and the transfer is legal.
The selling dealer’s silence is making a bad situation much worse
Saliba says he understands that Prime Motors may not have known the car was stolen. “The dealership who sold it to me had no record or knowledge of the vehicle being stolen,” he said. But he explains that industry practice and the law require the selling dealer to buy the car back once a title problem is found. It is worth noting that BMWs are among the vehicles with surprisingly high repair costs, which makes a dispute like this even more financially painful for everyone involved.
“But typically what happens in this situation is the selling dealer is supposed to buy the car back from me,” Saliba stated. “Because they didn’t know it was stolen. I get it. It’s a mistake. You know, they made a mistake.”
Saliba says he would rather resolve this without going to court, but he is getting no response from Prime Motors. “They want to go the legal route and all that stuff. And I don’t really want to go that route, but no one’s responding back to us,” he admitted. Out of frustration, he tagged Prime Motors directly in his TikTok post and even mentioned the Virginia attorney general, urging his followers to pressure the dealer to “do the right thing.”
A growing scheme called VIN cloning, or a “VIN swap,” may explain how the stolen car passed through two dealerships without being caught. The National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB) has noted that this method is becoming more common, with criminals able to order laser-etched VIN plates online for as little as $22.
Even a full vehicle history report can miss this if the VIN has been carefully changed or if the theft has not yet been entered into national databases. Buyers should also be aware that new cars can suffer damage quickly from environmental factors, meaning the condition of a vehicle can deteriorate fast if it sits unprotected at an impound or towing lot.
Published: Feb 17, 2026 05:45 pm