Texas Plumber Whose Ford Pickup Ended Up with ISIS Is Suing the Dealership

That’s exactly what Texas plumber Mark Oberholtzer had to go through after he had sold his old Ford F-250 pickup truck to AutoNation Ford Gulf Freeway in October 2013. The man was probably happy with the price and the new car he got in return, so he went on with his life changing pipes and unclogging drains.

Fast forward one year and two months later to December 2014, when a tweet from an Islamic State militant group showed a black Ford pickup blasting its AA gun with the Mark-1 Plumbing - Mr. Oberholtzer’s company name - logo still adorning the truck’s door. Needless to say, our plumber man was pissed.

You can also imagine that this mishap immediately raised his brand’s awareness, but the old saying that “there’s no such thing as bad publicity” had just been proven wrong once and for all. His business suffered, and he might even have received some death threats from people believing he willingly sold his old truck to a terrorist organization. As if that’s even possible.

Mr. Oberholtzer felt the explainable need of suing somebody, and since defeating ISIS in a court of law would be even tougher than doing it on a battlefield, the only viable solution left was the AutoNation Ford Gulf Freeway dealership.

“Why the hell didn’t he just take the wrapping off his car before selling it?” you’ll say, and that’s a valid point. In his complaint cited by courthousenews, Mark says that as he was waiting for the deal on his old truck to close, he started peeling the branding stickers off the car, when a salesman told him to stop as that would “blemish the vehicle paint.” The AutoNation employee went on saying “the dealership had something better for removal,” according to Mark’s statement.

Now, Mr. Oberholtzer is asking for “$1 million in punitive damages for fraud, gross negligence, negligent misrepresentation, defamation, invasion of privacy and deceptive trade.” And while we’re no lawyers, if what he says about the removal of the stickers is true, he has every chance of winning. Maybe not $1 million, but still a nice sum.

If you’ve recently sold a pickup with your company’s livery on it, now’s the time to start browsing through tweets from ISIS and hope for the best. Don’t be surprised if two men in black suits will shortly ring at your door, though.