Customer leaves Hummer at repair shop — and worker sells it for $1,000, Utah cops say

It was a steal of a deal — literally.

Utah police say two men face charges after one, a tire shop employee, sold a 2008 Hummer H3 that was left at the shop by a customer for long-term repairs to the other for $1,000, KSL reports.

The rightful owner’s car had broken down in January while driving from Texas back to his home in Washington through Utah, the Deseret News reported. He left the Hummer at a tire shop in Price, Utah, for extensive repairs before continuing his journey home.

“The repairs were completed and paid for by the owner, and the vehicle was parked in the shop’s lot pending retrieval by the owner,” a police press release said, the Gephardt Daily reported.

But police say the owner couldn’t get back to Utah to retrieve his vehicle “due to bad weather and a difficult work schedule” until early April, KSL reported. He discovered the Hummer was gone.

Security video from the lot led investigators to Travis Martin Jordan, 33, and the missing Hummer, police say, according to the Deseret News.

Jordan told investigators he’d visited the shop to buy a tire when an employee, Travis Jon Loveland, 28, offered to sell him a Hummer for $1,000, according to the publication.

Police say Loveland told Jordan the Hummer had been owned by a man who’d been deported and that a “second owner” of the vehicle was eager to sell, the Gephardt Daily reported. Jordan returned to the tire shop after hours to purchase the Hummer from Loveland.

“Travis Jordan was advised although his story may be somewhat accurate, any reasonable person would know that the circumstances regarding the sale and pick up of this Hummer were suspicious,” police said, KSL reported.

Loveland later reached out to police, offering to explain the sale, but stopped talking when police questioned inconsistencies in his story, the Gephardt Daily reported.

Both men were arrested on suspicion of second-degree felony theft of an automobile, the Deseret News reported. The errant Hummer was returned to the owner.

This story was originally published May 13, 2019 at 1:19 PM with the headline "Customer leaves Hummer at repair shop — and worker sells it for $1,000, Utah cops say."