This Hamilton man's car was marked as 'wrecked' and taken at police stop. How mistake happened is a mystery

Members of a Hamilton family are looking for accountability — and their money back — after their vehicle was listed as being sent to a scrap yard, resulting in a police stop, the temporary loss of their vehicle and nearly $5,000 in fees.

"Everyone keeps saying, 'We don't know what happened. We can't tell you what happened,'" Gerben Vanden Heuvel told CBC Hamilton.

"We don't even know a simple answer of who [made] the mistake yet, which is super frustrating that no one is wanting or willing to fess up."

Vanden Heuvel's odyssey of detective work, documentation, emails and affidavits began around 7:30 a.m. on Feb. 23.

Vanden Heuvel's car was towed and impounded in February. (Submitted by Gerben Vanden Heuvel)

The Stoney Creek resident said he was driving to work when a police officer pulled him over and told him, according to information tied to his licence plate, he was not the registered owner of his Toyota SUV and the vehicle was listed as wrecked.

Vanden Heuvel said this confused him because he leased the car in 2018, purchased it from his dealership in 2021 and had been driving it since. He said he showed the officer his ownership papers, but the officer explained the vehicle was registered to a local business called Mike's Auto Parts & Scrap Cars, and told him to get out.

The police had Vanden Heuvel's car towed, charged him with using a plate not authorized for a vehicle and gave him a court summons. CBC Hamilton has viewed a copy of that ticket.

Hamilton police spokesperson Krista-Lee Ernst confirmed the incident occurred, saying the officer had checked Vanden Heuvel's plate with an automated reader and found it marked "unattached."

When the officer checked the plate and vehicle identification number (VIN) in the Police Automated Registration Information System, they found it was registered to someone else, prompting the ticket.

This is the proper protocol, Ernst said, adding that generally, anyone looking to have their vehicle, plate or licence record processed should go to a Service Ontario office. She said information entered there is transmitted to the provincial Ministry of Transportation, which shares data with the police system that officers use to verify ownership and status.

Later, Vanden Heuvel told CBC Hamilton his April court date was pushed ahead and eventually cancelled, with the city telling him it would be thrown out after further review.

Car ownership switched to scrap business, deemed junk

After the tow truck driver took his car on that February day, Vanden Heuvel said, he went to Service Ontario, where he spoke to a manager and explained the situation. The manager also tried to call Mike's Auto Parts in Stoney Creek, but didn't reach anyone, he said.

According to a records search Vanden Heuvel shared with CBC Hamilton, his VIN history shows the SUV being transferred to him on July 16, 2017, the day he bought out his lease from Red Hill Toyota in Hamilton. That record shows the car being transferred to Mike's Auto Parts on Nov. 3, 2022. At some point in between, it shows the car marked as wrecked.

"I did not transfer my VIN to Mike's Auto Parts," he wrote in an affidavit to Service Ontario. CBC Hamilton also has a copy of Vanden Heuvel's affidavit.

Vanden Heuvel said he's at a loss to explain what happened and nobody he's spoken to has done so. He said the car has not been in an accident and the car was not wrecked, nor did he have a lien on it.

Vanden Heuvel says his car hasn't been in an accident, but it was marked as wrecked and the ownership was transferred to a scrapyard. (Submitted by Gerben Vanden Heuvel)

After visiting Service Ontario, Vanden Heuvel said, he went to Mike's Auto Parts, only to find the shop on Mud Street had been replaced by Kenny U-Pull, a junk cars and auto-parts business. A search of the Ontario Business Registry shows Mike's Auto Parts has been inactive since July 2020.

Eventually, Vanden Heuvel said, he and his partner attempted to reach the business's former owners to get them to confirm they had no interest in his vehicle. However, he said, they did not produce the documentation he needed. On Thursday, CBC Hamilton emailed and called the former Mike's Auto Parts owners for comment but didn't received a response by time of publication.

At a loss on what to do, Vanden Heuvel and his partner turned to their member of provincial parliament (MPP), Donna Skelly, for help. He said her team connected him to the Ministry of Transportation. Emails between Vanden Heuvel's partner, Czerny, and Skelly's office show a back and forth in which the couple were asked to provide information and get photos of their vehicle to prove it was not wrecked.

An unnamed person with the ministry is cited as saying the November 2022 permit transfer was done correctly and it appears Mike's Auto Parts had the car's original permit "for reasons yet to be clarified."

Eventually, the ministry asked for an affidavit outlining the situation and stating Vanden Heuvel is the owner of his vehicle. Then, on April 4 — about 40 days after the traffic stop — someone in the ministry "waved a magic wand" and he got his car back, Vanden Heuvel said.

Skelly confirmed her office helped the couple, writing in an email that she was "relieved that the situation has been resolved."

'Frustrating' lack of accountability

But for Vanden Heuvel, getting his car back wasn't the end.

He said his family is out about $3,750 for towing and impounding fees, and had to spend about $350 to prepare the documents and pay the legal fees they needed to get the car back. He said he has also lost income by taking time off work and estimated the whole kerfuffle has cost about $5,000. Someone should pay him back, he said. He's just not sure who.

"One of the most frustrating parts," Vanden Heuvel said, is nobody has taken responsibility for what happened.

Skelly declined to comment on Vanden Heuvel's search for compensation.

In an email, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Transportation told CBC Hamilton: "The ministry can confirm that there was no clerical error made on MTO's/Service Ontario's end. Our understanding is that the error was made when the registration was initially completed."

They did not respond to followup questions seeking clarification.

Praveen Senthinathan, a spokesperson for Ontario's Ministry of Public and Business Service Delivery, which is responsible for Service Ontario, also said Service Ontario did not make a mistake.

Neither ministry answered questions from CBC Hamilton about how this happened, who was to blame, why it took so long to fix the problem, whether Vanden Heuvel will be compensated or how they will prevent something similar from happening again.

The manager of the company that owns Red Hill Toyota, Ilya Pinassi, told CBC Hamilton he's confident his team didn't make any mistakes when they sold Vanden Heuvel his car. Pinassi said a record check "clearly demonstrates Red Hill Toyota only once was involved with a change of ownership on this client's vehicle and that was when it was authorized by the client."

He added that in his experience, it would be easy for someone to make a typo when entering a VIN number for an ownership transfer at some point after that.

The mystery remains unsolved

A recent Carfax vehicle history report on Vanden Heuvel's SUV shows a message stating that on Nov. 3, 2022, the vehicle was mistakenly issued a junk title, an error that was later corrected. It does not go into further detail.

Vanden Heuvel said that message was not there when he first checked the system several weeks ago.

CBC Hamilton requested comment from Carfax but did not hear back before publication.

At this point, Vanden Heuvel said, he's trying not to let the mystery of what happened keep him up at night.

"I just want a conclusion to this not-fairy-tale story."