Being forced to pay for a car you don’t have anymore is a frustrating experience. That’s what happened to one man who found out that the dream Mercedes-Benz he had been diligently making payments on for two years had been taken from him. One day he woke up and found that the vehicle was missing from his driveway. Thinking that it was stolen, he called the police, but he eventually discovered that the dealership had sold him a vehicle that was still in the previous owner’s name and that the vehicle had been repossessed. Yet now he’s on the hook to pay the rest of the loan.
Man forced to pay loan on car he no longer has
Despite scrimping and saving to purchase his dream Mercedes-Benz, Mark Moore says his car has been repossessed through no fault of his own, according to a lengthy Facebook post he wrote that has since gone viral.
Moore says he purchased the Mercedes-Benz from the Central Cadillac dealership in Ohio back in January 2024. After saving for his dream car, he booked a one-way flight to Cleveland just to purchase it, putting down $30,000 and financing the remaining $59,000 through the dealership’s recommended banking institution.
Since then, from January 2024 to March 31, 2026, he kept his car registered and says never missed a payment on the loan. So it was a shock when he found that the Mercedes-Benz was gone from his driveway on the morning of March 31.
“I assumed initially that it had been stolen,” Moore told local outlet 3News, “and so I called the police.”
But then he discovered that Mercedes-Benz Financial had repossessed the car because it was tied to a debt from a previous owner, to the tune of a whopping $106,000. In other words, his dream car had been flagged for repossession before Moore purchased it.
“My understanding is that the previous owner had purchased the car directly from Mercedes,” he explained. “And in some kind of skip trace fraud scheme, they had traded it in with fraudulent paperwork. They had created a fraudulent title, sold it to Central, Central then sells it to me.”
Moore says his attorneys have been contact with Central Cadillac for nearly six months, but the situation has yet to be rectified.
“I had done nothing wrong. I had cut no corners. I had missed no payments,” he wrote on Facebook. “They kept my money. I lost the car.”
Dealership says the situation is complicated due to a theft ring
While Moore believes that Central Cadillac should be held responsible for purchasing the Mercedes-Benz and not catching that it had a fraudulent title, the dealership tells 3News that it was a victim of the situation as well.
Christopher Studor, the general manager of Central Cadillac, claims they purchased the car from another dealership in Bedford with a title that seemed to be “free and clear.” It was only later that Central Cadillac learned that the repossessed Mercedes-Benz was part of a larger theft ring he says is embroiled in a federal investigation.
Studor explained, “The owners were able to get the title, the lien removed from the title by flipping it in and out of the state of Ohio and a couple others.”
While Studor sympathizes with Moore’s situation, they are still waiting for the insurance claim to be pushed through. Because of the federal investigation, the matter has become “a little bit bigger than just Central Cadillac.”
Studor says he has spoken with Moore’s attorney several times and that the issue has moved to the dealership’s legal team, though there is no timeline for when the issue will be resolved.
