VW stolen 35 years ago in Washington state found in a shipping container

[stomper]

Is there a moral of a story here?
yes .. check ID of any car before you spend $20,000 to restore.

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A Volkswagen van stolen 35 years ago in Washington state has been found in a shipping container at the Los Angeles/Long Beach seaport. Customs agents found the 1965 van on Oct. 19 when they opened a shipping container bound for The Netherlands. They ran the vehicle identification number and discovered it was listed as stolen.

Law officers said the van, which is in great shape, was stolen from an upholstery shop in Spokane on July 12, 1974 — while Spokane was hosting the 1974 World's Fair.

Authorities have not been able to find the original owner, whom they would not identify.

The operators of a vehicle restoration business in Arizona were the latest to have possession of the van, which they refurbished and planned to sell overseas, said Michael Maleta, an investigator with the California Highway Patrol. Maleta said the shop is also considered a victim in the case, and he declined to identify it.

The van now legally belongs to Allstate Insurance Co., which paid off the original owner's theft claim back in 1974. The Highway Patrol turned over the van to Allstate this week.

Maleta said the van had been restored to pristine condition.
"Now it's probably worth 27 grand," he said. "It's a beautiful van."
Megan Brunet, a spokeswoman for Allstate, said the company is looking through old records trying to find the original policy and theft claim.


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[ELDO91]

Wow that is crazy, what are the odds?!

[stomper]

i was jut thinking .. typically an insurance co offers to sell a totaled car to the owner for 20% of the pay out .. if the owner is still around and kicking, or maybe even the Estate, someone could have the van for 20% of what the ins paid for in the claim in 1974.

those VW vans were worth under $2,000 in '74.

20% of $2000 is $400 ..


http://www.cadillacforum.com/forum/s...5437#post35437


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[rickyd]

hmmmm lets see, $25000. + or $400..........?????????? yea the ins co will look realllll hard to find the owner.

[stomper]

reported on January 17, 2006
http://search.cbp.gov/query.html
Homeland
1968 Chevrolet Corvette convertible missing for 37 years.

The Chevrolet Corvette convertible, stolen in 1969, was returned to its original owner thanks to a dedicated band of law enforcement officers in California and New York.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the California Highway Patrol (CHP), the National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB), and the New York City Police Department (NYPD) joined forces in recovering the stolen Corvette before it was shipped from the Port of Long Beach, Calif., to its new owner in Stockholm, Sweden.

“This is a miracle,” said Alan Poster, the Corvette’s owner, when law enforcement officials told him that his car had been recovered. He saw his car for the first time in 37 years at a media briefing held at a CBP warehouse in Carson, Calif., today. Poster was living in New York City when his Corvette was stolen in 1969. Today he lives in Petaluma, Calif., a community 32 miles north of San Francisco.

“You can’t get your kicks on Route 66 anymore, but we got a kick out of assisting in the recovery of this classic car,” said Kevin Weeks, Los Angeles director of Field Operations for U.S. Customs and Border Protection. “Americans love their cars,” he added, “Customs and Border Protection helps fuel that love by maintaining productive partnerships with our state and local counterparts in preventing the illegal exportation of stolen vehicles.”

The Corvette’s saga began on January 22, 1969, when the NYPD took a stolen vehicle report from Poster. On January 3, 2006, almost 37 years to the day that the Corvette was stolen, U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s LA/Long Beach seaport Outbound Enforcement Team along with the CHP’s Foreign Export and Recovery Team (FEAR), and the NICB, seized the Corvette from a shipping container destined for Sweden. The new owner, a Stockholm resident, bought the car from an unidentified seller for $10,000. He did not know the car was stolen.

In late November 2005, the Corvette’s shipper presented the car’s do***entation to the CBP LA/Long Beach Auto Export Validation Desk. On December 7, subsequent to processing the vehicle’s do***entation, the NICB advised CBP that a stolen vehicle record existed on the Corvette.

Following inspection of the car it was held from being exported to Sweden until the NYPD, the originator of the stolen vehicle record, could confirm the validity of the dated record – initiated January 22, 1969. It took two NYPD detectives four days to locate the record, which was stored on microfiche.

On December 23, 2005, the NYPD Auto Crime Division advised LA/Long Beach CBP that the Corvette had never been recovered and the victim had been located. Following seizure of the car on January 3, it was put in storage at a CBP warehouse in Carson, California.

Further investigation is being conducted by the CHP to determine a possible culprit in this case.

Over the past three decades the Corvette endured several modifications – originally sporting a blue exterior and interior, it is now silver and red respectively; the original 327-cubic-inch engine has been replaced by a 454 big block Chevy engine; a stolen automatic transmission, that wasn’t introduced until the mid 1980s, has replaced the original transmission; and the gas tank is missing.

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a few other such stories posted by the folks that intercept some of these thefts before leaving the US.

http://search.cbp.gov/query.html

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