Florida man says dealer had him arrested after he bought his dream truck

A Florida Coast Guard officer says his dream truck turned into a nightmare when the dealership that sold it to him had him arrested like a car thief.

According to NBC 6 reporter Amanda Plasencia, civil rights attorney John Bryan, and consumer lawyer Steve Lehto, the mess started with a simple paperwork error — and ended with guns drawn, a dented bumper, hours in a cell, and now a lawsuit.

Buying The Dream Truck

Amanda Plasencia reports that Chief Warrant Officer Shane Sprague works as a chief maintenance officer at U.S. Coast Guard Air Station Miami.

He’s spent 27 years in the Coast Guard, and even works on helicopters associated with Marine One, the presidential fleet.

Off-duty, Sprague had a simpler dream: a 2024 GMC Sierra 1500 AT4X in Thunderstorm Gray.

On his Civil Rights Lawyer YouTube channel, attorney John Bryan explains that Sprague had wanted that exact truck for years.

He worked overtime, saved aggressively, and finally walked into Doral Volkswagen in South Florida on June 21, 2025, ready to buy.

Bryan says Sprague put $15,000 down, traded in his 2012 Ford Focus for about $1,500, and financed the rest of the roughly $61,000 price through the dealer.

The dealership processed all the digital paperwork, issued him a registration, handed over the keys, and even gave him a USB drive with all his documents, Bryan notes.

A salesperson named Ali snapped a photo of Sprague grinning in the driver’s seat and later texted him to say thank you and “happy motoring.”

For the next ten days, Sprague drove that truck to and from his home in Sunrise, Florida, to the Coast Guard station in Opa-locka with zero issues, according to Bryan and Plasencia.

On paper, it looked like a completely normal car deal.

Felony Stop In A Parking Lot

Everything changed on July 1, Plasencia reports.

That afternoon, Sprague left work and headed to a physical therapy appointment in Broward County.

When he walked back out to the parking lot and climbed into his new truck, he had no idea deputies were closing in.

According to bodycam video cited by both Plasencia and Bryan, an unmarked Ford F-150 suddenly rammed his rear bumper, pinning the truck in its parking space.

Red and blue lights flashed around him.

Multiple Broward Sheriff’s Office deputies swarmed with guns drawn.

“Turn around, turn around,” they shouted, as Sprague stepped out, lifted his shirt to show he had no weapon, and walked backwards toward them, Bryan recounts.

He was handcuffed in front of bystanders and physical therapy staff and placed in the back of a squad car.

Plasencia says he can be heard on camera asking, over and over, what was going on.

Deputies told him he was just “detained” pending an investigation, not formally arrested — a distinction that felt meaningless as he sat shackled in the back of a cruiser, Bryan points out.

From there, Sprague was taken to a station, searched, and put in a holding cell.

He stayed there for about four hours, Plasencia reports, before anyone clearly told him why his life had just been turned upside down.

A VIN Error With Real-World Consequences

The reason, according to all three sources, was not that Sprague had stolen anything.

It was that Doral Volkswagen had reported his brand-new truck as stolen.

Plasencia says that after deputies spoke with the dealership, it emerged that an employee had entered the wrong VIN and made an error in the paperwork.

Steve Lehto, citing the underlying lawsuit and auto-press coverage, adds that the dealership’s finance office appears to have linked the wrong plates and possibly the wrong vehicle in their system.

Some other truck or record may have been the real problem, but the vehicle pinged as stolen — and Sprague’s AT4X, equipped with LoJack, was the one that got flagged and tracked.

Lehto notes that Sprague never agreed to have that tracking device installed, and that his security clearance actually forbids unauthorized tracking on his personal vehicles because of his work around high-ranking officials.

So not only did the VIN error trigger the stop, the hidden tracker raised separate security concerns.

Plasencia reports that once detectives finally sat Sprague down, they asked him to walk through how he got the truck.

He calmly described the entire purchase: calling ahead, working with salesman Ali and a manager named Chris, signing digital forms, paying the $15,000 down, arranging financing, and driving off the lot with a valid registration and plate from his old Focus.

Bryan points out that throughout this interview, Sprague was the one supplying evidence – including texts from Ali and photos of the truck – while detectives slowly realized the problem might be on the dealership’s side, not his.

“Isolated Human Error” Versus Civil Rights

Once the dust settled, Doral Volkswagen’s attorney Robert Shimberg told NBC 6 that the company offered “sincere apologies” to Sprague, Plasencia reports.

Shimberg called the event an “isolated incident,” caused by a human paperwork error, with no malice or malicious intent.

He said the dealership is committed to resolving the case and has asked a court to compel arbitration, hoping to work things out outside of a full jury trial.

Lehto notes that the lawsuit accuses the dealership of negligence, emotional distress, and false imprisonment, and seeks damages in excess of $50,000.

He also explains why the push for arbitration matters.

In his experience, arbitration panels tend to be less generous to consumers than juries, and they rely on repeat business from big companies like car dealers – a structural incentive that can tilt the playing field.

Bryan, looking at the same case, goes further than the dealership’s apology.

From his civil-rights perspective, the key issue is not just the VIN typo.

It’s what law enforcement did with that information.

Under the Fourth Amendment, Bryan explains, an arrest without a warrant requires probable cause that the person being seized committed a crime.

A mistaken stolen-vehicle entry from a dealership might be enough for reasonable suspicion to investigate – to pull someone over, ask questions, check documents.

But Bryan argues that it is nowhere near enough justification to immediately ram a truck, point guns, and haul an innocent buyer off in handcuffs, especially when the deputies clearly didn’t yet understand what was really happening.

He points out that during the detention, the deputies repeatedly told Sprague he wasn’t under arrest, even though they had already used force, locked him in a cruiser, searched his truck, and later put him in a holding cell.

Calling it “detention” doesn’t change the reality that this was, in practical terms, an arrest, Bryan says.

He believes Sprague should not only be suing the dealership, but also the officers who escalated so fast without doing basic on-scene investigation.

Aftermath: Lawsuits, Arbitration, And A Shaken Life

Plasencia reports that Sprague says the ordeal was “one of the scariest events” of his life, something he could never have prepared for.

He describes going from a decorated 27-year Coast Guard veteran to being treated like a felon in front of strangers, then sitting alone in a cell wondering what had just happened.

Lehto notes that after the story hit the news, Sprague even started receiving nasty online messages from people who assumed he really had stolen the truck.

Some internet strangers, he says, seemed to enjoy calling him a thief, even after the error came to light.

Meanwhile, the truck he had worked so hard to buy was damaged in the ramming and towed away.

Lehto says Sprague ultimately canceled the purchase and is now driving a rental while the legal process plays out.

Doral Volkswagen’s attorneys insist this doesn’t reflect the dealership’s normal level of service and that it was a one-off mistake they want to fix.

But Bryan and Lehto both stress that “mistake” or not, the impact on Sprague was very real.

He was humiliated in public, deprived of his liberty for hours, and thrown under a cloud of suspicion because several systems – dealership paperwork, LoJack tracking, and aggressive policing – all lined up in the worst possible way.

A Cautionary Tale For Car Buyers And Police Alike

Lehto uses the case to highlight how easy it is to botch a 17-digit VIN.

He even tells his own story of a title where one digit was fat-fingered, and only careful checking of the VIN on the car versus the document caught the error.

In his situation, it resulted in extra paperwork.

In Sprague’s, it resulted in guns and handcuffs.

Bryan’s takeaway is bigger than just dealership sloppiness.

He warns that police can’t treat every database flag as a green light for maximum-force tactics, especially when there’s no allegation of a violent crime and plenty of clues suggesting a misunderstanding.

As he often says, “Our rights don’t end where your fear begins. Freedom is scary. Deal with it.”

For ordinary buyers, the lesson is uncomfortable but simple.

Double-check every document.

Ask if your car has hidden tracking devices.

Keep copies of your sales paperwork handy.

Because as Shane Sprague’s case shows, a typo in a finance office and a hasty response on the street can turn a happy day at the dealership into a story about how your dream truck got you thrown in the back of a squad car.