Jonathan Fredricks saved $10-thousand over a year of working at Chick-fil-A. His grandfather offered to take him shopping for his first car when he turned 16, and they saw a car online that led them to a used car dealership called I Drive DFW. The car they came to see wasn’t what they wanted, so the salesman, James Steelman, showed them another car. The 2016 Mazda CX-5 was just what Fredricks was looking for. When they went to write the check, the salesman told them the vehicle was actually his and to make the check out to him. So they gave Steelman a check for around $98-hundred and received a bill of sale and a promise that the title would be coming soon.
Forward five months later, Fredricks is at a store when he comes out and sees his vehicle being towed. “We stopped the tow truck guy and we started talking to him. And I was like ‘this is my car,’” explains Fredricks. “And he said it was getting repossessed. Which didn’t make sense because I had paid cash.” I Drive DFW had repossessed the vehicle and claimed that it belonged to them and they had the title to prove it. They said that Steelman doesn’t work for them and that they didn’t know the car had been sold by him. Steelman claimed that the vehicle was his to sell and that he was just waiting on the title from I Drive DFW. Fredricks was without a car and out almost $10-thousand.
Then the folks at Frank Kent Motor Company in Fort Worth heard about Fredrick’s story and decided they wanted to do something to help the teen out. The dealer’s marketing director Aaron Hoernke released this statement: “After seeing the story initially on CBS Dallas – we at Frank Kent knew we had to do something to take care of this kid and show him that not all dealers are sleazy like the one he had previous dealings with! So we reached out to the news station to get us in touch with him and, after getting in contact, let him know that we would like to donate a vehicle to him at no cost.”