Tina Hansen had a sweet plan: surprise her son with a car for his 17th birthday. Instead, she watched surveillance footage of it being towed away in seven minutes flat, and learned it had already been scrapped before police could do anything about it.
The Greenfield, Wisconsin woman is now one of at least three victims identified by Milwaukee’s TMJ4 News who found themselves in the same gut-punch situation: their stolen vehicles were sold to scrapyards and crushed before law enforcement could intervene. What makes Hansen’s case especially infuriating is how little it took to pull off. The thief did not need a car title. Did not need the keys. Did not even need to know how to hotwire anything. All it took was a handwritten note, a fake signature, and a valid ID — and for that, she walked away with $300.
Surveillance footage obtained by the Greenfield Police Department shows a tow truck pulling into Hansen’s apartment complex parking lot on March 17 and leaving with her red Toyota Camry just seven minutes later. Seven. The whole operation was faster than most people’s coffee orders. Hansen did not even know the car was gone until she went looking for it, and at first was not sure if it had been towed by the property manager for some reason. It had not been…