UK man shells out £20K to unknowingly buy his own stolen car

A man feeling distraught when his cherished car got stolen bought an identical one for £20,000 as a replacement and then realised that he had in fact unknowingly bought back his own stolen car.
It was the second shock for Ewan Valentine, 36, a software engineer from Solihull, West Midlands, in a span of a few weeks. On 28 February, when he woke up and looked out of his window, he found that his car, a black Honda Civic, had disappeared from his drive overnight, said a Birmingham Live report.

Valentine was too fond of his Honda Civic R, which could do 0-to-60 mph in six seconds and has a top speed of 168 mph.
After overcoming the heartbreak, he informed the police and his insurers and started looking for a replacement and did actually find one that looked ‘identical’ some 70 miles away.

“I was looking for a more or less identical car, and the one that caught my eye was identical—color, make, model, even down to the custom exhaust system. So it seemed perfect.”
“I went down to the garage to check it over. But I think my judgment was a little clouded by how desperate I was to replace my car, so I didn’t do the most thorough check. I drove it all the way back. But when I went to put a few things in the boot, I noticed a tent peg and some Christmas tree pines in there,” Ewan added.
“I had shattered a bottle of beer about a year ago and could never quite get rid of the smell. I could smell beer, and also noticed some wrappers that were mine.”

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“I started feeling a little strange about the situation because it could all have been a coincidence. So I decided to check the satnav history.”
“There was my address, my parents’ address, my partner’s address and places we’d visited.”
“It then dawned on me that my phone connected instantly as I left the garage, rather than needing to pair it as a new device.”

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“I contacted the police and checked the car for VIN. The Vehicle Identification Number didn’t match my original car, but there were indications that things had been tampered with.”
The chrome embossed VIN was missing from the engine bay. The VIN on the door frame was a sticker, and the engine serial number had been painted over.

“The first thing one technician at the local garage said was ‘do you have the original key’. I’d completely forgotten about the physical key tucked away inside the key fob. I pulled it out, placed it in the lock and it immediately opened.”
“A part of me felt sort of triumphant for a moment until I realised, actually, no, this isn’t some heroic moment; you didn’t go and get your car back; you’ve actually done something a bit stupid.”

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“It was my car. They did further checks, plugging a laptop into the car, and managed to find the original VIN,” he added. Then the gearbox serial number also matched.
Ewan said that it seemed the thieves were quite adept and had also fooled the garage from where he bought the car.