LYNNWOOD, Wash. — Two cars are stolen in two days from a Lynnwood dealership.
In the 12 years that Nima Salestani has owned Seattle Finest Motors, he told KIRO 7 he’s never seen anyone just walk up and steal a car during business hours.
“They’re just getting bolder and bolder. It is crazy,” Salestani said.
His surveillance video captured the separate incidents. Thieves were able to get away in under a minute with the cars.
“It just happened so fast, so quick. Just came in, grabbed the car and left like there is nothing is there to stop them,” he said.
It started Saturday at 10:30 a.m. when surveillance video caught a pickup pulling up to the shop next to a brand new Toyota Tacoma.
“We had a car just running in the front over there. Just getting the car warmed up for a customer to show up on a test drive,” Salestani explained.
In the video, a man hops out of the truck and hops into the Toyota. He peels out of the parking spot and nearly strikes an employee.
Salestani says the truck made it down White Center and it hasn’t been seen since. He says it cost at least $20,000.
“It costs us all the money for the car because the insurance cost has been through the roof lately. You have a claim or two, you can’t even get insurance anymore.”
If you have seen these two suspects below, call the police.
To make matters worse, it happened again on Monday just after 6 p.m.
Surveillance video shows a man, who seemed like a promising buyer to Salestani, finishing up a test drive.
" He had an insurance card. He had everything. And then, you know, all of it was stolen. So it was, it was a fake I.D. The insurance was not real,” Salestani explained.
The man waits for the employee to step out, grabs his coat from the back seat, jumps into the car and drives away.
Salestani says Lynnwood police were able to recover the Jeep in Everett about 30 minutes later.
Fortunately, the Jeep is back in the lot without any damage.
He’s still down thousands of dollars and says it impacts everyone.
“It’s a small business. And we employ about 50 people here. Fifty people make a living from this business and if we go through financial hardship, everybody else is going to be affected by it as well,” Salestani said.
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