In the wake of multiple investigations by the West Virginia State Police and Hardy County Sheriff’s Department over fraudulent foreign schemes to use false drivers’ licenses to sell land comes one from Grant County in which a resident’s classic car was stolen.
Chief Deputy J. T. Miller reported that what he has concluded were foreign criminal operatives had created fraudulent drivers’ licenses using publicly available identifying information and invented details for categories that were not available. Using identification that appeared legitimate, con artists used these to fool real estate agents into selling vacant property out from under unsuspecting owners.
What appears to be a similar false identification variant scam has deprived a Grant County man of his classic car and proceeds from the sale thereof.
As Faron Shanoltz explains “My father-in-law Buzz Hinkle was selling a 1957 Chevy Bel-Air that he had restored.”
He went on to explain that the vehicle was stolen from “an 83-year old that proudly restored this car over several years.” Shanholtz went on to add that “anyone who knows Buzz knows his honesty and enthusiasm for meticulously restoring vehicles.”
On June 11, a man had arrived to purchase the vehicle. As Shanoltz related “there were several phone calls to discuss the car and negotiate an agreed-upon price.” The would-be buyer drove from South Carolina and brought a trailer. After test driving the vehicle and agreeing to the price, “he wanted to finalize the purchase with a cashiers check.”
Hinkle tried to protect himself from potential fraud. The deal made included a photograph of the drivers license that the would-be buyer had and “my father-in-law kept the car’s title.”
As Hinkle finalized the purchase, two other men remained in the vehicle driven from South Carolina. “One was a middle-aged adult, the other appeared to be late teens in age,” shared Shanholtz.
The man who negotiated the purchase stated that he wished to drive the car and the group left town. “The next morning,” Shanholtz related “the check proved to be fraudulent. The phone number was no longer active. This was reported and is an active investigation. He explained that once the Grant County Sheriff’s Department exhausted its options for investigation, the Federal Bureau of Investigation took over the case.
Shanholtz shared that the group who stole the car likely did so as part “of an organized car theft ring.” One detail that disturbs Shanholtz is that “the other two men that sat in the vehicle for the incident had a purpose for being there.” While he says “we will never know the purpose,” he speculated that “it’s conceivable they came to take the car by whatever means necessary.”
As Shanholtz explained, Hinkle had conducted business like this with automobiles that he restored for years, with small town friendliness and “the same trusting manner.”
“We understand that we will likely not see this car again,” he lamented.
Though new to this area, these scams have been perpetuated for years. In 2014, the FBI described “an international auto theft operation in which defendants purchased U. S. vehicles using stolen identities and then shipped the cars to Ghana. Africa, for resale before victims became aware of the fraud.
In this case, but not necessarily the same as what happened to Hinkle, a conspirator in Ghana directed operatives in the United States using false credit cards and drivers licenses purchased from a dark web site based in Singapore. The conspirators identified by the FBI targeted car dealerships, not individual sellers.
NBC Washington reported in 2022 that many fraudulent drivers licenses are created with information garnered from massive data breaches.
Shanholtz’s goal lies in making “the criminal in the drivers license photo famous” and shares that “the world could use more people like Buzz Hinkle as he harbors no hate and simply cannot fathom how someone could do such a horrible thing.”
