LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Several cars were stolen from dealerships in the Louisville area, but it wasn't the traditional smash-and-grab.
An employee at Craig and Landreth in St. Matthews said this is one of the most advanced, pre-meditated cases of identity theft he's seen in his 15 years working there. Police said people are stealing identities and driving cars off the lots.
Someone came in Friday, police said, and bought a white Dodge Challenger Hellcat in the showroom.
"There were really no immediate red flags out of the ordinary," General Manager Zach Wimpey said.
That same person came back the next day, sat down and asked about multiple other cars.
"Normally, it might be a family, and that kind of makes sense — husband and wife, father, son something like that," Wimpey said. "But not one person buying three very expensive cars within a two-day period."
These were cars with price tags of around $80,000 each.
At that point, they knew something was off, and a police officer showed up to ask some questions. That's when the person trying to buy a car told police someone kidnapped a child.
"The people that were keeping the child from the parent, they were using that child maybe as leverage to force or coerce the parent to do what they wanted them to do," St. Matthews Police Detective Lisa Doyle said.
At around the same time police found out the child was safe, they got word about more cars that were stolen from other area dealerships. They determined it to be a car theft ring out of Georgia.
"Any large city like this — where you have multiple dealerships — is gonna be a prime location for something like that to happen," Doyle said.
Police say seven people are involved in stealing at least five cars. So far, officers have arrested three people, and they're still looking for four others.
St. Matthews officers let Kentucky State Police troopers know there were people on the loose in the case, and they were ready for them to head down Interstate 65. Police believe they were on their way back to Georgia. They tried pulling them over, and two stopped, two got away, and one of them ended up in Freeman Lake in Elizabethtown.
"It's pretty impressive, the kind of effort they put into," Wimpey said. "It's also kind of spooky what somebody can acquire about somebody else."
Police are still looking for a white GMC Denali.
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