Every Turo host agrees to a sentence in the company’s terms of service that could double as a summary of a lawsuit filed last week in Philadelphia: “You will not offer any vehicle that is the subject of a missing or stolen vehicle report.” The suit says a car matching that description was offered anyway, booked by a Minnesota mother, and driven into New Jersey, where she found out about its paperwork from the police.
Christina Chapman of Minneapolis filed the case on Oct. 16 in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas, both for herself and as parent and natural guardian of her minor child, according to the court’s public civil docket (Case ID 261002333). The defendants are Turo Inc. of San Francisco, a company called VMOVEX LLC, and a man named Viacheslav Merkulov. The last two are listed at the same address in Northeast Philadelphia.
The central allegation, as summarized by Law360, which reviewed the complaint, goes like this: the car Chapman rented had previously been reported stolen. Its owners recovered it and put it back on Turo. The stolen-vehicle flag stayed put. While Chapman was visiting New Jersey, police detained her in front of her child. The suit blames Turo for never getting the flag cleared.
What the court record shows, and what it doesn’t
The docket and the civil cover sheet, which the court lets anyone preview, confirm the parties, the filing date, and the lawyers: Jared S. Zafran, with Andrew J. Thomson as co-counsel, both of the Law Office of Jared S. Zafran in Philadelphia. Chapman has demanded a jury, and the docket records a request for eight jurors. The cover sheet checks the box for an amount in controversy above $50,000. Philadelphia’s form offers only two choices, so that box covers everything from $50,001 up. The court classifies the case as “4F – Fraud.”
The free preview stops at the caption page of the 22-page complaint, and the court sells the rest. The Auto Wire has not reviewed the full complaint, so several details are still unconfirmed: which New Jersey police department made the stop, when it happened, what car was involved, how long Chapman was held, and what roles VMOVEX and Merkulov are alleged to have played. The docket doesn’t describe their roles either.
A theft report that outlives the theft
A stolen-car report doesn’t close itself when the car turns up. A reported theft goes into law-enforcement databases, and it stays there until someone clears it. Agency procedures, like this Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department manual section, say only the agency that originally entered a stolen-vehicle record can clear it as recovered. Another agency that finds the car sends a “locate” notice back to the original agency instead. So if an owner quietly gets a car back without telling the department that took the report, the database has no particular way of learning about it.
Car sharing makes that gap harder to see. At a traditional rental counter, the company that hands over the keys owns the fleet. On Turo, a host owns the car, the platform owns the booking, and the theft report belongs to whatever police department took it. The guest, the one person who will actually be behind the wheel when an officer runs the plate, has no practical way to check any of it.
Turo’s terms saw this coming
Turo’s terms hand the problem to hosts in plain language. Besides the promise quoted above, they say Turo is not responsible for the legal status of vehicles shared on the platform, including whether a car is “the subject of a stolen vehicle report.” They say hosts have “sole responsibility” for making sure their cars aren’t.
The terms also attach a price. Offering a vehicle that is the subject of a missing or stolen vehicle report is one of the host breaches listed as triggering a $5,500 liquidated-damages payment. So Turo’s own contract describes the exact situation Chapman alleges, assigns it to the host, and puts a dollar figure on it. Whether that arrangement protects Turo from a guest’s claims is one of the questions this lawsuit will test.
Not the first time
In February 2025, Glendale, Arizona, police stopped three men visiting the state in a car they had rented on Turo in Phoenix. According to Arizona’s Family, which obtained the body-camera footage, officers surrounded the car with guns drawn and handcuffed the men before sorting it out. Turo told the station the host had reported the car stolen earlier and it was never removed from the stolen-vehicle database after it was recovered. The company called it “an unfortunate situation that never should have happened” and said it was strengthening its safety and communication protocols with hosts.
Twenty months later, by the account in Chapman’s complaint, the same kind of leftover flag sent another Turo guest from a routine trip to a police detention.
Where the case stands
As of Oct. 21, the docket lists the case as waiting to be scheduled for a case management conference. No defendant had filed a response. Every allegation in the complaint is unproven, and none has been tested in court.
Reporting a car stolen takes one phone call. The lawsuit is really asking whose job it was to make the second one. Should car-sharing platforms be required to check a car’s stolen status before every booking, or does that responsibility belong to the people who own the cars?
Sources: Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas civil docket, Chapman v. Turo Inc., Case ID 261002333 (filed Oct. 16, 2026), and civil cover sheet; Turo Terms of Service; Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department manual, Motor Vehicles – Recovered; Law360; Arizona’s Family.
Lead image: Philadelphia City Hall seen from South Broad Street, by Dave Z via Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY 2.0.