Purchased a stolen 84 Grand National.

Hello: I purchased advertised 1986 GN. took it home . but when I started to clean it up I noticed that all the stickers where removed from the doors and trunk. " should of know better" then I continued to remove the dash pad and there it was , shinny pop rivets attaching the Vin. by the way the vin attached to the car checks out ok and matches the title. I called the cops and they found the correct vin on the frame. it turns out to be stolen ! they inpounded the car and gave me a case number. I purchase the car on Craigs list and when I went back to look at the ad it had been rtemoved by the poster. I did give the cops the sellers info like phone number and home address and name . the car belongs to State farm insurance . its been about a month now and nothing has happened . no arrest nothing !! I call the cops with the case number and all I get is voice message with no return phone calls . what are my options here and can I get the car somhow from the insurance company?? Thanks for any info you guys might have. please email me at jetmech09@msn.com

wow! sounds like a mess! sorry I can't help but Good Luck, hope it all works out for you...

What a nightmare!

It is very unlikely that you will get either the car or any money back. The car is property of the insurance co and you technically have no right to it. The guy you bought it from may have bought it the same way you did. Unless they can prove that he did the vin swap and/or stole the car they can't touch him either. You are screwed. I'd word it nicer but the real story here is that you are simply screwed. They won't press charges on you for possession of stolen property because you notified them as soon as you found it.

so much for doing the right thing

If you were the luckiest man on earth, you might be able to get the insurance adjuster to sell you the car back for salvage value. From thier standpoint, if the car has an altered vin, it's worth no more than whatever it would bring at a salvage auction. They may have something against it "just in case you were the guy who stole it" or something. Beyond that, if you were the luckiest guy on earth, your post would be about how you won the lottery and not about how you accidentaly bought a stolen car. Agreeing with the post above, doing the right thing here probably cost you a bunch of money. You should have parted it out LOL.

ALTHOUGH, if the car had an 86-87 drivetrain in it and/or 85-87 interior, wheels, etc, you might find a way to get parts of the car back. It all depends on what the car looked like when it was stolen. If a stock 84 GN was stolen and you bought a car that has a majority of non-84 parts on it, the only thing they can prove was that the ins co owns the frame/body But it's not a homicide so they'll give the car to insurance and not bother to investigate it for you.

I feel your pain jetmech. I had 2 NC DMV come visit me at my former employer back in 1997. They wanted to look over a green/grey metallic '95 Impala I had purchased several months earlier. The car ended up being stolen, I was out my money, they drove the car away from work that day, and I had to get my ex-wife to come pick me up I did see the car a few years later, but it wasn't in my garage!

Sad, isn't it?

D

wow..... I can't believe this crap...... I hope you get the bastards who did this....... Please keep us posted.....

as some one said the 84 body and parts belong to the ins company not the 86-87 parts and stuff. That said id tie the car up in litigation so that the ins company won't be able to anything with it that before getting a ruling from the courts. That should buy you some time to negotiate a purchase from them or at least get some parts off of the car. plus the ins company doesn't want to sit on old cars like these as they only cost them time and money.
Good luck and move on this of for get about it.

Unfortunately these cars are older now and people do a lot of restorations, which includes frame swaps. If there is no way to prove the shell is original to the frame, the insurance company only owns the frame. I know of quite a few GN's that needed frame swaps due to accidents or rust. Lets just say Joe Bob Gn Owner wants to restore his rusty framed GN. He buys a frame off Craigslist and continues on with his restoration. He finishes and sells the car. New owner finds out the frame is from a stolen car, does that make Joe Bob a criminal? Nope! So, I'd just simply tell the insurance company that you will get the frame back to them and tear the car apart and put it on a new frame.

It's likely the engine/transmission are hot as well so they'll check the VIN on the block. Hell, the drivetrain to my GN stolen in '06 never surfaced.

Wow that just sucks. Glad you did the right thing, sorry it is going to cost you money though. Hope you get something back in the end. Maybe a hug from the insurance agent? KIDDING!!

No call back from Dick Tracey??? Pay them a visit and demand action...
County, city, state cops involved?? Go directly to the head of whatever agency is involved....

where did you buy this car from?? are you sure it was a gn? did you see the cowl tag spid label near firewall? ...interesting..something happened to me awhile back that i dont post on here because the thief or thieves might be on here or browsing as guest...they took a car from me, an 84 long ago i lost all my $$ it was already converted, super clean.. have any pics of motor?? i can tell my old car away very easy any pics of the car? it was a ttype cloned to a gn

your also in Miami ??? i saw your phone # where is this car at? too much of a coincidence to ignore. give me the guys # who sold it to you please i need to give someone a visit. pm me not on the thread please.

To go one further, I'd like to know what the frame number was along with the VIN stamped on the block and the transmission case and what numbers were on the cowl tag. All this information would most likely narrow down what exactly was stolen and whose property it legally is. What I'm getting at is if there are no numbers on the tub, and the drive train doesn't match the partial VIN on the frame than how can John Law and State Farm claim it's the stolen car in question? I'm betting, from the information in the OP that the frame(and tub) are from a 84 NA Regal. GM only stamped the last 8 digits of the VIN on the frame so how do you tell it's a 84 GN if the engine code is missing and no other info is on the tub? Seems to me if you could prove that if only the frame was stolen than State Farm doesn't have a claim to the car because it's not the part that the full VIN tag is attached to. If it was me I'd be on a rampage to either get my car or/and my money back.

here's a link to a story I read a few weeks back about somebody who did just that. And suceeded. I know it's not the same circumstance but you get the idea how you might be able to get back after the seller anyway. http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2012/02/ebay-escapades-how-to-be-a-small-time-car-flipping-crook/

If it's now property of an insurance company, then it's probably not your old car. If yours was stolen and you lost all your money on it (no full coverage) then the police WILL trace the VIN back and give it to the person who it was stolen from (you). If an insurance company gets it, that's because they paid a claim to the person who had it when it was stolen, and if it gets recovered, the INS. co. owns it and likely won't even notify their client that their car was recovered. It's happened before on this board where someone was paid a claim and several years later ran a carfax on the vin. Found out it was recovered and sold at an insurance auction and is now legally titled somewhere else.