Detroit Police investigating after cars found without plates
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By Robin Murdoch, Fox 2 News -
Mike Monicatti found the Chevy Venture he was looking for along with other cars without license plates. (Credit: WJBK | myFOXDetroit.com)
DETROIT (WJBK) -
"There's definitely something out of the ordinary going on here. Obviously there's not four abandoned cars in a side of a driveway that are just sitting here for no reason," said Mike Monicatti, owner of Monicatti Recovery Services.
It's a possible insurance scam uncovered by a Roseville repo man of sorts. It's Monicatti's job to track down stolen or missing cars from area dealerships or banks, and boy did he.
"We have one of our clients, RightWay, who is a client that has about nine dealers here in the metro Detroit area, and they called us and let us know one of their vehicles [was] reported stolen last night off their lot."
A GPS unit led Monicatti right to it in a driveway in the 13000 block of Mansfield. Monicatti found the Chevy Venture he had been searching for along with three other cars with no plates and a flatbed tow truck filled with what he believes are hot purses, radio and other belongings.
"In my opinion, this is a big chop shop for insurance theft. These customers or whoever they are make a deal with these people, who are willing to take their vehicles, and then they go ahead and make sure these vehicles are not found and then they're either, again, chopped up or they're disposed of, then the insurance companies are left holding the bill for all these," Monicatti said.
We did try to call both numbers located on the side of the towing truck to see how or if the company is involved with this situation. None of the numbers were working. Detroit Police are now investigating.
"Nobody happens to know anything that's going on. The lady said next door that these cars have been here for a long time, but yet our car that was third in row was just missing last night," Monicatti explained.
Monicatti said a DPD officer ran the VIN numbers on all those cars and discovered that none of them had been reported stolen as of yet, only adding to his theory that something just isn't right and that the rest of us are being wronged.
"It's frustrating as a business owner and as a father to pay the rates that we pay for insurance for quite blatant fraud that's going on," he said.
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Mike Monicatti found the Chevy Venture he was looking for along with other cars without license plates. (Credit: WJBK | myFOXDetroit.com)
