Dealership’s Typo Turns Florida Coast Guard Chief Into a Theft Suspect

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Buying a new truck is supposed to be a highlight — a selfie next to a gleaming tailgate, maybe a celebratory playlist on the drive home. 

For Chief Warrant Officer Shane Sprague, that one-two punch of joy and irony came with handcuffs. 

What started as a June 21 purchase of a 2024 GMC Sierra 1500 AT4X from Doral Volkswagen turned into a July 1 traffic stop where deputies pulled him out of his own truck at gunpoint — all because of a paperwork chain reaction that looks, in hindsight, wildly avoidable.

Here’s the short version of the comedy of errors (if by “comedy” you mean “a very expensive and traumatic misunderstanding”). 

Sprague put down a $15,000 deposit, traded in a 2012 Ford Focus for $1,500, and financed the rest of the roughly $61,230 purchase through the dealer. 

A happy photo was even snapped at the lot. 

Days later, a LoJack alert flagged the truck as stolen, an unmarked F-150 rammed Sprague’s rear bumper during the stop, and Broward County deputies detained him while body-cam footage captured his confusion and compliance. 

He had the sale paperwork — on a USB drive at home — but by the time detectives connected the dots the Sierra had been towed and impounded.

So how does that happen? 

According to reports, the finance manager allegedly entered the wrong VIN when completing the sale. 

In the dealer’s computer, the truck showed as neither sold nor on the lot — a data contradiction that apparently prompted the dealership to report the vehicle as stolen and to activate its LoJack GPS tracking. 

That activation is a significant element in the story not just because it led police to the truck’s exact location, but because Sprague holds a sensitive government security clearance that restricts unauthorized tracking of his vehicle. 

For a man who supervises maintenance at the Opa Locka Coast Guard station — including work on helicopters used during presidential movements like Marine One — the implications were especially serious.

The human cost here is obvious: a long-serving service member shoved to the ground by a cascade of clerical mistakes and automated alerts. 

Sprague says the episode left him shaken, humiliated, and out a truck until the impound situation sorted out; he canceled the purchase and got his deposit back, and has filed suit against Doral Volkswagen seeking damages (reports indicate the suit seeks $50,000 or more). 

The dealership’s legal team, in turn, has pushed to move the dispute into arbitration and requested an evidentiary hearing — a fairly common defensive posture for dealers in high-profile consumer disputes.

There are a few policy and safety angles worth pausing on. 

First: clerical accuracy at point-of-sale is not an administrative nicety; it can trigger criminal investigations when systems talk to one another (sales databases, law-enforcement alerts, vehicle trackers). 

Second: retrofitting tracking tech or activating LoJack on a vehicle after it changes hands raises serious consent and security questions — doubly sensitive when the registered driver has government duties and clearance. 

Finally: the episode spotlights how fast automated systems plus human error can escalate into real-world danger — especially when police are responding to a “stolen vehicle” alert and must assume worst-case scenarios for officer safety.

The takeaway for dealers, customers, and cops alike is simple and practical: double-check VINs, confirm ownership before filing theft reports, and pause before activating location trackers on newly sold cars. 

For Shane Sprague the trauma and legal fight are real; for the rest of us, it’s a cautionary tale about what can go wrong when small clerical mistakes meet high-tech policing. 

And for Doral Volkswagen? This is the kind of PR faceplant no amount of showroom polish can buff away easily.


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#PaperworkAndPeril #VINFail #CoastGuardDrama #DoralVolkswagen #ShaneSprague #LoJackGate #DealershipDebacle #ImpoundedNotStolen #AutoSaleNightmare #ArrestedAtGunpoint #BuyersBeware #ArbitrationPending #TrackersAndTrouble #MarineOneMaintenance #ClericalCatastrophe

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