Texas Plumber Sues Ford Dealer After Truck Ends Up In Jihadist Hands

When Mark Oberholtzer went to trade in his 2005 black Ford F-250 for a 2012 model, he started to peel off a decal on the truck’s doors that advertised “Mark-1 Plumbing,” his Texas City plumbing company, with a phone number underneath.

His salesman Edgar Velasquez, though, stopped him, Oberholtzer says. The dealership has better ways of removing decals, he said, that wouldn’t damage the truck’s paint.

Oberholtzer says the salesman told him to “let them handle it.”

They apparently didn’t, and now Oberholtzer is suing AutoNation Ford Gulf Freeway in Houston after his truck became a viral sensation when it ended up in a propaganda video for a jihadist group fighting in Syria.

The result: hundreds of phone calls and death threats to Oberholtzer and his family that led him to temporarily close the business and leave town, he says in the lawsuit, filed last week in Harris County court.

“At no time did Velasquez or any other agent, servant or employee of the Defendant tell Plaintiff that Defendant would leave the decals on the truck, which would be transferred in some fashion to international jihadists conducting warfare upon innocents in Syria,” says the lawsuit, rather bluntly.

“Within 48 hours (of the tweet), the photograph had gone viral via the Internet and multiple news outlets,” the lawsuit says.

The truck was sold as a dealer vehicle at an auction, then exported to Turkey, the lawsuit says, citing a CARFAX Vehicle History Report.

The office, whose phone number was clearly displayed in the video, received “over 1,000 phone calls,” according to the lawsuit, which included angry yelling, singing in Arabic and “threats of injury and death against Mark-1’s employees, family, children, and grandchildren in violent, lurid and grossly specific terms.”

His secretary refused to return to the office, and the business was forced to close while Oberholtzer left Texas City for nine days.

Three days after the tweet, “The Colbert Report” — the former satirical news show on Comedy Central hosted by Stephen Colbert — ran a segment called “Texan’s Truck In Syria,” mocking the situation. The segment was later referenced at the 2015 Emmy’s, when the show was nominated for an award.

Oberholtzer says the phone calls continued for more than three weeks after the photo got out and they pick back up ”whenever ISIS commits an atrocity that is reported nationally, which occurs with distressing frequency.”

He is asking for more than $1 million for damages to his company’s reputation and compensation for his lost revenue.

A call to the dealership referred Patch to AutoNation’s corporate media relations department. When reached by phone, an AutoNation spokeswoman instructed Patch to submit a request via email.

In a response, AutoNation did not answer specific questions asked by Patch but released the following statement:

“We certainly sympathize with Mr. Oberholtzer in this situation. However, as previously stated, his lawsuit has no merit. We are not aware of any evidence that exists to support Mr. Oberholtzer’s claim that he requested that the markings be removed at the time of his trade. As such, the markings remained on the vehicle when it was sold through auction more than two years ago to MAZ AUTO, which is an unrelated third party auto dealer in Houston, Texas.”