Selling a car used to mean sticking a sign in the window and waiting for someone to roll up with a check. Now it means telling the entire internet what you’re driving, where you’ll be, and when you’ll be standing next to it alone. A Colorado case that just closed in federal court shows exactly how dangerous that trade-off has become, especially for anyone listing something expensive.
Alec Deschryver, 26, was sentenced earlier this month to 18 years in federal prison after pleading guilty to two counts of carjacking. Prosecutors said he zeroed in on luxury cars listed on Facebook Marketplace, with Mercedes-Benz sellers as his preferred mark. The sentence follows a two-incident spree in late 2023 that left one seller with a gunshot wound and forced law enforcement to take the link between online car sales and violent crime far more seriously.
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A Pattern, Not a One-Off
The U.S. Attorney for the District of Colorado, Peter McNeilly, handled the case and called Deschryver a violent and determined criminal. That wasn’t just courtroom language. Deschryver ran the same play more than once. He found sellers online, reached out through his own Facebook account, set up meetings under the cover of a test drive, then pulled a gun and drove off with the car. His targets were ordinary people, not a single bad day. The evidence stitched together across both robberies, plus cooperation between agencies, made clear this was a deliberate scheme rather than a crime of opportunity. It’s a model private sellers around the country keep running into, and it doesn’t require much sophistication to pull off.
How the Spree Unfolded
The first robbery happened in Loveland in October 2023. Deschryver used his real Facebook account to arrange a test drive for a Mercedes sedan. The husband of the woman who had posted the listing came along for the ride and was carjacked at gunpoint partway through the drive. One minute it was a routine transaction, the next the car was gone.
A month later, Denver Police caught a nearly identical call, except this one turned bloody. The seller was shot in the thigh while pulling a car seat out of the back of the vehicle. He wasn’t fighting anyone or refusing to cooperate, he was doing a harmless task during a meeting he believed was legitimate, and he got shot anyway. The victim was a young father trying to sell the car so he could buy something better suited for winter and for hauling his family around.
Two robberies, two jurisdictions, one offender. That connection didn’t surface by accident. ATF Special Agent in Charge Chris Ashbridge said his office stepped in and tied the two cases together using surveillance footage, online messages, and ballistics. Ashbridge explained that investigators were able to take what looked like separate local incidents and link them into a single run of violent crime.
Why the Federal Route Mattered
Federal law carries far stiffer penalties than most state equivalents, which is a big reason an 18-year term was even possible. Building both robberies into one federal case also closed off the alternative, where the incidents might have been tried separately and ended with lighter sentences that could have run concurrently. Charging it as a unified federal prosecution kept the full weight of the law on the table.
This Isn’t Just a Colorado Problem
It would be easy to write this off as a local fluke, but the numbers say otherwise. Carjackings tied to Facebook Marketplace car sales have turned up in Illinois, Florida, Maryland, Georgia, Kansas City, and plenty of other places. In Osceola County, Florida, a BMW seller was forced out of his own car at gunpoint during a test drive set up through the platform. In Gaithersburg, Maryland, people listing a BMW had a handgun pulled on them at their own home. In Chicago, a seller and her father were run over by the very car they were trying to sell after a so-called buyer drew a firearm.
The thread running through almost all of it is the test drive. That’s the moment a seller is most exposed: a stranger has the keys, the seller is in the passenger seat or standing on the curb, and saying no to a gun is a gamble most people won’t take. Luxury cars and newer models only sharpen the targeting, because the reward for a successful theft is so much bigger.
What Sellers Can Do Before the Next Listing Goes Live
McNeilly warned that criminals are actively working online marketplaces and urged sellers to take steps before ever meeting face to face. The advice is concrete: meet in the parking lot of a police station or a designated safe exchange zone, which many departments now set up for exactly this reason. It doesn’t erase the danger, but it strips away the isolation that makes these meetings appealing to a predator.
Don’t meet alone. Share the buyer’s contact details with someone before you go. Treat test drives with suspicion, and consider holding a cash deposit before you hand over the keys, which weeds out anyone who isn’t a serious buyer. Checking the buyer’s identity helps too. Deschryver used his real account, which helped get him caught, but most won’t be that careless. A throwaway profile with no history is a reason to slow down, and a quick look at an account’s age and activity is the bare minimum before agreeing to anything.
The 18-year sentence means something real for the victims, and it sends a clear message that federal prosecutors will take this kind of crime as far as the evidence allows. Whether it stops the next person from running the same con through the same app is the harder question, and it’s one every private seller should be weighing before the next listing goes live.