Luxury car maker Mercedes-Benz narrowly caught a nearly $290,000 SUV that was about to leave the country through the Port of Montreal without even being reported stolen.
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As car thefts surge, Mercedes recently went to court to describe what appears to be another scheme to covertly export a vehicle.
On May 2, an Ontario consumer signed a seemingly legitimate financing deal at a Mercedes dealership in Brampton, GTA.
He walked away with the keys to a G63 AMG sport utility vehicle with a mammoth 577-hp V8 engine, after pledging to make 72 equally mammoth monthly payments of $4,651.71.
The first of these installments was scheduled for June 2. However, less than 24 hours before this deadline, the vehicle was spotted by border services… at the Port of Montreal.
Destined to leave the country
“Customs has a Mercedes G63 which is not reported stolen, would it be possible to check if the vehicle is financed please?”, wrote to a bailiff an investigator from Equity Association, a non-profit organization created by major insurance companies to fight fraud.
This intervention allowed Mercedes’ financing division to quickly apply to the Superior Court to obtain a seizure before judgment and cancel the contract of sale of the luxury vehicle.
“The vehicle was probably in a container […] intended for export out of the country,” the petition reads.
The automaker’s financing arm says it works regularly with Equity Association to “prevent the illegal export of stolen or financed vehicles.”
Mercedes-Benz points out in the proceedings that “vehicle recovery becomes illusory as soon as [le véhicule] leaves Canadian territory.
The G63 AMG is one of the most expensive vehicles in the manufacturer’s catalog.
A real plague
Auto theft is a real scourge in the country. This Thursday, the Sûreté du Québec carried out a series of searches and arrests in the Capitale-Nationale region, in connection with a network that allegedly stole around fifty vehicles.
In April, the Border Services Agency and the Montreal police announced that they had seized 53 cars at the Port of Montreal that had been stolen in Quebec and Ontario.
In Quebec, the number of vehicles reported stolen jumped from 4,440 in 2016 to 10,505 in 2022.
– with the collaboration of Ian Gemme