VIDEO. “The police called me”: Marvin bought a stolen car at a car dealership

“If I bought through a dealership and not from a private individual, it was precisely so that I would not end up in this situation,” Marvin says disappointedly, looking at photographs of his car. Having bought it from WeeCars, a company specializing in the resale of used cars, this thirty-year-old man living in Plessis-Robinson (Hautes-de-Seine) thought he had finally found the car of his dreams. Earlier, two weeks later, the police came to his door and informed him that the car was, in fact, stolen.

“It’s true, it’s shocking because there are always people behind who are going to ask questions, it’s traumatic,” says Marvin, who is losing income because he doesn’t have a car. A car that cost him almost 20,000 euros and for which he took out a loan. “It’s hard for my father to go to the hospital today, and for my wife, who is pregnant. False alarms always occur during pregnancy. Every morning, instead of going to kindergarten in 20 minutes, my son spends more than an hour on transport and gets stuck.

Is the dealer also a victim?

So how could this happen? For its part, WeeCars assures: the company is “also a victim” in this matter. According to a franchise manager we contacted, the dealership is “the victim of a criminal ring that issued false registration documents.” “It was when we wanted to redo the registration document that the car was recognized as stolen,” says the man who runs Weecars in the city of Orleans.

“Such a situation could happen,” says Marie-Stella De Jésu-André, director of legal affairs at the Mobilité Club France association, who also does not rule out the possibility of negligence on the part of the concessionaire. “In this case, it is indeed possible that the sale was carried out quickly under an incorrect registration document, and by the time the investigation progressed and the police discovered a trace of the vehicle, it would have already been sold.”

After filing a complaint and numerous reminders, Marvin negotiates with the WeeCars team to find common ground. The company’s management guarantees that it is doing “everything possible to ensure that the franchisee can indemnify and compensate its client for losses.” Watch our video testimony.