In late September, we shared Craig and Hannah Blanchard’s story. The Dunedin, Florida couple bought a used Toyota RAV4 for their teenage daughter. They paid in full with $17,000 from a home equity loan, only to watch it get hauled away by law enforcement seven months later. The car, they were told, wasn’t really theirs.
That gut punch set off a long, confusing ordeal. Ultimately, it touched on one of the murkiest corners of car ownership: the mechanic’s lien.
The RAV4 came from a local man named Vasilios “Bill” Ioannidis
He runs B&B Spyder Customs, an auto shop in the area. Blanchard said he met Ioannidis in a residential front yard, not a dealership lot.
He paid with cashier’s checks made out to “Bill” personally, but the title listed Ioannidis’s business.
Everything seemed fine…until deputies arrived one day with a tow truck
They seized the RAV4 as evidence in what they described as a “fraudulent sale.”…