by Doug DeMuro
At least I have my umbrella.
The Amazing Tale of the Stolen Ferrari F50
Unlike every other story in this book, the tale of the stolen Ferrari F50 didn’t happen to me. When the story began, I was a fifteen-year-old high school sophomore with a learner’s driving permit and socks that went up to the middle of my shins. When the story ended, I read the conclusion on the Ferrari Internet forums from hundreds of miles away. I played absolutely no part in the theft of the F50, although I did once steal a Micro Machine from a childhood friend’s house after a sleepover.
But even though I’m not personally involved in this story, I’ve decided to tell it here for two reasons. Number one, because I’ve had the unusual opportunity to meet several people involved in the story over the years, and they’ve told me their versions of events in detail. And also because it’s the single greatest automotive story of the last quarter century.
And so, ladies and gentlemen, here’s the amazing tale of the stolen Ferrari F50.
It all begins in September 2003, when a man walked into Algar Ferrari, the Ferrari dealer in the wealthy Main Line suburbs of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and stole a Ferrari F50.
Of course, you don’t just steal a Ferrari F50. This isn’t something you just hotwire and take on a joyride, like a ’94 Accord you can start with a spoon handle. The F50 is a true supercar: the pinnacle of Ferrari’s lineup in the 1990s, it used a V12 derived from a Formula One race car. Production was limited to a claimed 349 units for the entire world. These days, the F50 is valued at well over $1 million—and even back in 2003, it was easily worth $600,000 or more. It was probably the only one on sale in the entire country at the time.
Which is probably why, in September 2003, a man walked into Algar Ferrari and stole it.
Although the specific details about the F50 theft differ from person to person, the general facts I’ve been told are the same—and they all start with a man arriving at Algar Ferrari on a September day in 2003 in a chauffeur-driven limousine wearing a pricey Rolex watch and expensive clothes. He claimed to be the chief executive of a technology company in California, and everything about him seemed to prove it: the limo, the watch, his clothes; he even had the bank statements to back up his wealth. He talked the talk—and according to everyone present, he spent several hours in the dealership going over every aspect of the F50 in detail with the sales staff. This was normal behavior for a well-heeled enthusiast. It was, after all, a pretty big purchase.
After spending the day at the dealership, the executive was ready to make the purchase—with only one stipulation: he wanted to test drive the car before he bought it.
Now, in a normal automotive dealership situation, this is a pretty reasonable request. You want to buy a car you’ll probably have for the next few years; they generously let you take it on a long, thorough test drive that lasts for approximately eleven minutes. But at the Ferrari dealer, it’s a different story: a lot of “prospective buyers” come in to take a “test drive,” when really they just want to waste the staff’s time and joyride around in a Ferrari for a little while. Even more “prospective buyers” undoubtedly want to “test drive” the notorious F50, one of the fastest and most valuable Ferrari models of all time. So Ferrari dealers get used to saying no to test drives.
And there was another hitch: the buyer didn’t have his driver’s license with him. Not surprisingly, the dealership’s policy mandated that anyone who took a car for a test drive must show a driver’s license. So an unknown customer strolls in without a driver’s license and wants to take the F50 for a spin? It didn’t matter how rich he looked, or how many of the right questions he asked. The salesperson gave a simple answer: no way.
Upon hearing this, the executive—the guy with the chauffeur-driven limo, and the Rolex, and the bank statements—started to balk at the sale. After hours in the dealership going over the F50’s service history, and its mechanical state, and its overall condition, and negotiating the terms of the deal—on a vehicle that costs more than the vast majority of American homes—a test drive seemed like a fairly reasonable request. Just a short ride. Then I’ll wire the money. The sales manager overruled the salesperson. Let this man drive the F50, said the sales manager. He’s clearly a serious buyer. A test drive will seal the deal.
It was the last time the F50 would surface for the next five years.
Once again, accounts differ slightly as to exactly what happened next, but the general gist is this: The F50 left the dealership with the salesperson behind the wheel and the prospective buyer—the “tech executive”—sitting in the passenger seat. The salesperson drove a few minutes up the road before getting out of the car to switch seats with the prospective buyer. But the buyer didn’t get out: as the salesperson walked around the car to enter the passenger side, the buyer hopped over the gear lever and climbed into the driver’s seat.
Then he sped away in a $600,000 Ferrari.
The salesperson immediately recognized what had happened, but this was 2003: back then, cell phones weren’t something you had to have with you at all times, like keys, and pants, and your eyeballs. The salesperson didn’t have one, and it took him several minutes to run back to the dealership in order to tell his bosses what had just happened. It took several more minutes to alert the police to the theft—and to explain that this wasn’t just some common criminal stealing some common car, but a skilled swindler making off with an exotic sports car worth as much as much as a Honda dealer’s entire inventory. The police eventually set up roadblocks in the area, but it didn’t matter: the F50 was gone.
At the time, the general assumption was that the “prospective buyer” had actually been a professional thief, and that the car was quickly driven into a waiting box truck moments after the theft, likely bound for a port—and then for Asia. This theory centered on the fact that the black market for stolen imported cars in Japan was apparently thriving, with Japanese police doing little to stop the shipment of these cars into the country or their sale upon arrival. According to several Ferrari enthusiasts, a few other stolen exotics had also made their way to Japan, with little hope of recovery.
Regardless of where it went, nobody in the Ferrari community thought the car would ever surface again.
As for Algar, the trouble had only just started. The dealership’s insurance company pored over the theft report and discovered a problem: it wasn’t just Algar policy to take a customer’s driver’s license before allowing a test drive; it was also an insurance company requirement, in order to prevent situations exactly like this one. The insurance company started indicating it might not pay out the massive theft claim, since the dealer hadn’t followed proper procedures. One source told me that Algar sensed this could be a possible outcome and quickly began a fire sale of their inventory, discounting cars and selling them as quickly as possible in order to cover the giant, F50-sized hole on the company’s balance sheets.
It was about this time that an emergency room doctor in Kentucky attended a party thrown by colleagues of his wife. At the party, the doctor met an airline pilot with a mutual passion for cars, and the two began talking. The doctor—whose own collection included a Ferrari F40 and a Porsche Carrera GT, among other high-dollar exotics—asked the airline pilot if he owned any interesting cars, and the pilot replied that he had a Ferrari Testarossa and an F50. Stunned, the doctor asked the pilot to repeat himself. He had heard correctly: he had struck up a casual conversation at a party in Kentucky, and he met a man who owned an F50. One of 349 in the world. Worth $600,000. In Kentucky. And it got better: the car was parked outside.
“Do you want to see it?” asked the pilot.
Twenty minutes later, the two were off joyriding in the pilot’s F50, one of the rarest, most exciting, and most valuable modern Ferrari models in existence.
Over the next few years, the doctor encountered the pilot numerous times at various parties and car shows, and the doctor always told the pilot the same thing: If you ever sell your F50, I wa
nt first right of refusal! Although the remark may have seemed like casual banter between friends, the doctor was legitimately interested in the car—and in 2008, about five years after their original meeting, the pilot gave the word. He was getting a divorce and he was ready to sell the car. Was the doctor a serious buyer?
With the F50 only becoming rarer and more expensive, the doctor didn’t hesitate: he knew this seller, he knew this car, and he was ready to make a purchase. The doctor negotiated a deal for $575,000, which accounted for around $50,000 in maintenance and repair work that the car needed, and the two competed the transaction: the doctor handed over $575,000, and the pilot handed over the F50 and its clean Kentucky title.
This is where the story takes a turn for the worse.
Just a few weeks later, the doctor sent in paperwork to inform Ferrari’s headquarters of his new purchase. While this might seem odd if you’re buying, say, a Toyota, Ferrari enjoys keeping track of its old supercars—and letting the automaker know that you’ve purchased one ensures that you’ll be on “the list” for major Ferrari events and product launches around the world, long before those losers puttering around in used 360 Modenas and writing about it on the Internet.
So the doctor sent over the F50’s information to Ferrari as he had done many times before, on other occasions when he’d added one of the brand’s models to his collection. But this time, something was a different. Rather than providing a “Congratulations!” or a confirmation that they received the information, Ferrari responded with a request: Can you please fax us a copy of the title? And can you find the engine number and send that over, too? The doctor complied, but he immediately sensed something wasn’t right.
His suspicions were confirmed when Ferrari called back with some news: this was the car that had been stolen five years ago from Algar. The car everyone thought was loaded onto a box truck, shipped to Asia, and mothballed in some warehouse by an unscrupulous collector. Only, that didn’t happen. It wasn’t in Asia. It wasn’t chopped up for parts. It’s sitting in your garage, and you’ve just paid $575,000 for it.
The doctor was gutted. Not only did he unwittingly purchase a stolen car, but he was out more than half a million dollars.
Shocked, stunned, and dismayed, the doctor had no choice but to contact the FBI. Agents arrived the next day, reviewed the evidence, and removed one of the most sought-after cars of all time from the doctor’s house on the back of a flatbed truck.
But they also brought along some good news. As the FBI worked their investigation, they allowed the doctor to pursue financial recourse with the airline pilot who sold him the car. So, naturally, the doctor’s next call went to the pilot, informing him that Ferrari had discovered “some irregularities” with the car’s VIN and the engine number, and that the doctor wanted to unwind the deal. The pilot’s only response was swift: Do the police know?
The pilot offered to unwind the deal as quickly as possible, provided the doctor didn’t go to the authorities. Neglecting to mention that the car had already been confiscated and that he was working with the FBI, the doctor agreed—and the pilot began to pay back the doctor in installments, with 80 percent up front and the remaining 20 percent spread out over the next few weeks.
Meanwhile, the FBI was working the theft case. They contacted the salesperson at Algar Ferrari who had taken the test drive on that fateful day in 2003, and he confirmed what the FBI suspected: this was the guy who had stolen the car. He didn’t steal it to re-sell to someone else, or to ship it to a foreign country where it would be traded on some shadowy black market for stolen exotic cars. He stole the car for his own personal use, brought it back home with him to Kentucky, and drove it around in plain sight for the next five years.
So how did he pull it off?
As it turned out, the pilot had two things working for him: One, he was clever. And two, he had a friend at the DMV. Both components are handy when you’re registering a stolen supercar worth more than a house.
The first step was getting the car out of Pennsylvania and transporting it to Kentucky. No, the pilot didn’t take the F50 on a four-state, Bonnie-and-Clyde-style road trip with the roof off, thumbing his nose at every highway patrolman he encountered along the way. Instead, he did exactly what everyone expected: he drove the car to a secluded area, loaded it into a rented box truck, and left town. Only, rather than driving straight to the port for a rendezvous with an unmarked container ship, he set his sights for his own personal garage back home in Kentucky.
Then it was time to get legal proof of ownership for the car. The pilot’s first step was to get fake VIN plates made up for the F50, listing a different number than the vehicle’s actual VIN. The purpose here was twofold: one, so that nobody who saw the car could ever know it was the same F50 as the one that was stolen in 2003 from Algar; and two, so that the pilot could go about getting a new title with a different VIN number.
According to the pilot’s DMV friend, all he had to do in order to get a new title was to write a letter to the Kentucky Department of Transportation explaining that the vehicle had been imported to the U.S. but the buyer never took delivery. Somewhere in the import process, the pilot’s letter said, the car lost its foreign title—so can the state of Kentucky please issue me a new one? Stunningly, Kentucky said yes, they’d be happy to issue a new title. And that’s all it took: only a few months after that fateful test drive where he left the Ferrari salesperson by the side of the road, the airline pilot had a legitimate, state-issued title for his stolen supercar.
When the pilot took his title to the DMV for license plates, he was asked to provide the value of the car for sales tax purposes. He wrote down $22,500.
On the day of the pilot’s final installment payment to the doctor, the FBI arrived at the pilot’s door and arrested him for the theft of the famous Algar F50. They also charged him with two other high-profile thefts: a Ferrari Testarossa and a 328 GTS, both of which he had stolen in a similar manner from dealerships in New York and North Carolina, respectively. The jig was up, the pilot had been caught, and the whereabouts of the famous Algar Ferrari F50 were finally public.
But that isn’t the end of the story.
By all accounts, that should’ve been the end of the story. At this point, the airline pilot should’ve gone off to jail, the Ferrari should’ve been returned to its rightful owner—at this point, Algar’s insurance company, who eventually agreed to pay out the dealership’s claim after a short legal battle—and everyone else should’ve moved on, knowing there was one less thief in the world and one more F50 back on the market.
But this is where the story takes two wild turns.
One of these wild turns was literal: it happened on May 27, 2009, almost exactly a year after the car had been recovered, at the hands of FBI Special Agent Frederick Kingston. Kingston took out the F50 with Assistant U.S. Attorney J. Hamilton Thompson riding in the passenger seat, ostensibly to “move the car from one location to another,” but more likely to take a joyride in an exotic supercar worth more than their homes.
Just imagine it: two government employees—who probably hadn’t driven anything faster than a Mustang—behind the wheel of a mid-engine Ferrari supercar with a powertrain borrowed from a Formula One racecar. They didn’t even make it a mile before they slid off the road, hit a tree, and destroyed the car.
The insurance company sued the government for the car’s value, but a federal judge dismissed the suit, ruling that federal law grants immunity to the government for property damaged in law enforcement custody.
And the second wild turn? That would be the pilot’s punishment. After stealing a Ferrari F50 and “owning” it for years, driving around wherever he wanted with a fraudulently obtained license plate and title, the pilot received only two years in jail. If that sound a little lenient, it gets better: the judge deemed the pilot’s career to be so “important to the community” that the pilot was allowed to serve his jail sentence on weekends so he could fly during the week.
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bsp; Of course, this begs the question: Would you be willing to spend a few years’ worth of weekends in jail in order to own a Ferrari F50? I think I would. Now all I need is a Rolex, some phony bank statements, and a gullible Ferrari dealership sales manager.
Attention Waze: Please Stop Giving Me So Much Information
I think it’s time to discuss the serious flaws with the Waze app.
I already know what you’re thinking. Flaws? With the Waze app? There ARE no flaws! Waze saved me from getting a ticket! Waze saved me from getting arrested! Waze brought my kids to school and picked up eggs on the way home! Waze is currently my financial planner! Waze stopped a liquor store robbery in progress! Waze …
But before we go off creating the Saint Waze School for the Deaf and Blind, I think we should admit that really, there are some flaws. And today I’ve decided to address them.
First, however, I think it’s important to explain exactly what the Waze app is. Although I’ve mentioned it earlier in this book, I’m going to go into greater detail this time. This is primarily for the benefit of people like my parents, who don’t know a) what Waze is, or b) what an app is, or c) what day it is.