Some of the cars had old clothes where their airbags should have been.
This example was given by a European prosecutor April 2025 while describing what investigators had found inside a sprawling trade in damaged American vehicles comine to Europe.
The network’s Lithuanian cell had been established in 2020, five years before the first coordinated raids in April 2025.
Cars bought cheaply after crashes in the United States had crossed the Atlantic, travelled to workshops in Lithuania and emerged looking spiffy enough to sell again. Customers were often told that the cars had never been in an accident, or that they had been fully repaired.
The photographs released with the investigation show this wasn’t true.
A red Tesla had its left side crushed, its front wheel folded underneath the body and plastic covering its damaged windows.
Buying wrecked cars is not inherently illegal. Owners and businesses can rebuild written-off vehicles and return them to the road, provided the repairs and inspections meet the relevant requirements.
But making up an entire backstory for the car is another matter.
