Pretended to be a basketball player – and escaped with a car worth tens of thousands

The theft took place on August 14 at the hotel Hyatt Regency in the center of Savannah. At around 00:30 the suspect is seen entering the lobby, returning to a white Audi parked there to take his belongings from it and then approaching the parking service employees. He had a parking ticket belonging toBMW X5 Apora from 2026. According to the police report, the man told the employees that he plays basketball professionally and that he has several vehicles parked at the hotel.

The story worked. Although theBMW It wasn’t his at all, the workers brought him the car and he drove away. They later told the police that each parking ticket is associated with a specific vehicle – and the suspect did have the correct ticket.

The vehicle, whose value was estimated at about 90 thousand dollars, was owned by a car agency and was loaned to a customer who was staying at the hotel. The agency was later able to locate the car in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. The Savannah Police Department notified local authorities and requested that the BMW be entered into the stolen vehicle database. It later turned out that the car in which the suspect was seen earlier was also not his.

The white Audi A5 from 2025, in which the suspect was seen, also turned out to be stolen. The car, which is worth about $30,000, was reported stolen the day before and was found unlocked in the hotel parking lot. It is not known how it was stolen in the first place.

Police are also investigating another vehicle theft from a valet parking service in downtown Savannah. On August 5, she left a guest at the hotel Fairfield Inn Toyota model car C-HR From 2019 with the parking employees, and received a code that she was supposed to send when she wanted to get the car back. However, when she sent the code the next day at 09:38, it turned out that the Toyota and the key were already gone.

System records showed the code was activated at 12:06 a.m. – more than nine hours before the owner claimed she first sent it – and the phone number from which it was sent did not appear in the system. The Savannah Police Department linked the suspect to this case as well and released several images from security cameras in an attempt to identify him. He is described as a black male in his 20s, and as of last publication had not been arrested or named.