Plumber sues car dealer after spotting truck in ISIL video

An American plumber has filed a lawsuit against a car dealership after spotting a pickup truck he once owned in a Daesh (ISIL) video.

Mark Oberholtzer, the owner of Texas-based company “Mark-1 Plumbing,” is suing a Ford dealership for more than $1 million over damages to his company’s reputation after his company car, which still had the company’s phone number on it, ended up in the hands of Daesh terrorists in Syria.

Oberholtzer claims that he was harassed by hundreds of phone calls once a photo of his truck went viral.

The plumber’s lawyer wrote in the lawsuit that "by the end of the day, Mark-1's office, Mark-1's business phone, and Mark's personal cell had received over 1,000 phone calls from around the nation."

"These phone calls were in large part harassing and contained countless threats of violence, property harm, injury and even death," the lawyer added.

Oberholtzer argues that the dealership could have easily prevented the problem by simply removing the company-painted decals before reselling the truck.

According to the lawsuit, in October 2013, Oberholtzer took his Ford F-250 truck to AutoNation Ford Gulf Freeway in Houston for a trade-in.

He attempted to peel off the company's decals from the truck's door but a salesman stopped him, telling Oberholtzer that it would damage the paint, the lawsuit claims.

Oberholtzer said the salesman assured him that they would remove the company’s name and phone number before reselling the truck.

The truck was auctioned off in November 2013 and was shipped from Houston to Mersin, Turkey, the next month; only to set off a firestorm a year later after being spotted by a Twitter user.

Oberholtzer said the photo even prompted the Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to pay him visits.

The flow of Western vehicles into the hands of terrorists in the Middle East and other parts of the world has attracted global attention.

In October, the US Treasury Department sought information from Toyota about its Hilux pickup trucks and convoys of Land Cruisers featured in ISIL propaganda videos.

Toyota said in response that it did not know how the terrorist organization got hold of the vehicles.

The Daily Telegraph reported in August that more than 800 Toyota Hilux pickup trucks were reported “missing” in Sydney, Australia, between 2014 and 2015. Terrorism officials said they believed the vehicles may have been exported to territory controlled by ISIL.

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