Detectives believe a credit check is how a Delaware man learned that someone had leased a 2026 Tesla Model S in his name, according to a criminal complaint filed in Henrico General District Court. The complaint, as WRIC in Richmond reported it, ties that lease at a dealership off West Broad Street to a wider scheme of more than 70 Teslas fraudulently leased. All of it is allegation, and no one has been convicted.
A lease turns a stolen identity into a vehicle without the thief needing the purchase price or the title, and the person most likely to notice is the one whose credit file it lands on. The Henrico case shows how thin the checks are on both ends of that arrangement.
What the complaint alleges
Police arrested Yaoxu Zhou of Northern Virginia the month before WRIC’s Oct. 19 report, and he faces three felony counts: forgery, obtaining money by false pretenses and identity theft. The complaint accuses him and two other men of impersonating two Pennsylvania residents and one Delaware resident, whose identities investigators allege were bought on the dark web. It names a third person, Shuhao Zhang, as helping with the purchase.
Using the Delaware resident’s identity, the group allegedly leased the Model S in May 2026 with help from a middleman. A week later, the complaint says, the ring reached a fourth person to help lease a 2026 Tesla Model Y. Officers pulled surveillance video that showed three suspects at the dealership. WRIC reported that the cars are worth about three times as much in China, per the court documents.
Zhou is being held without bond. WRIC said his next court date was Oct. 22, and I could not find a published update on that hearing. Henrico police referred WRIC’s questions to the U.S. Postal Service Office of Inspector General, which is investigating the case.
Russ Stone, the 8News legal analyst WRIC interviewed, said that if the complaint is accurate, the three people whose names were used could have ended up on the hook financially. In a lease, the name on the contract owes the payments.
The export rule has a line about leased cars
Getting a Tesla out of the country is harder than getting one off a lot. Customs and Border Protection says exporters of used vehicles must file documentation 72 hours before export, and it gives the original title as an example of ownership proof. The regulation itself, 19 CFR 192.2, adds a clause for leased cars. In the 2016 edition I checked, a leased vehicle, or one with a recorded lien in the United States, needs a separate writing from the third party in interest that expressly permits the export.
WRIC’s account does not say how the Teslas cleared that step, and I am not going to guess. The rule does show where the paper check is supposed to happen: at a port, three days before departure. The alarm WRIC describes came from a victim’s credit file instead.
Overseas demand for North American vehicles with clouded paperwork is not limited to China. The Auto Wire reported that Russia’s Supreme Court ruled a Dodge Ram that Canada flagged as stolen can be registered there. Closer to home, title paperwork is the weak point in other schemes, such as the Cleveland used Mercedes repossessed from its buyer over someone else’s loan.
What Virginia law gives the victims
Under Virginia Code § 18.2-186.3, identity theft is a Class 1 misdemeanor that becomes a Class 6 felony when the victim’s financial loss is $1,000 or more. A court must order restitution as it deems appropriate, and that can cover the cost of correcting credit reports. The attorney general may help a victim obtain information needed to fix records, but the statute says no legal representation comes with it.
The subsection on selling or distributing identifying information climbs faster. It becomes a Class 5 felony at five or more people’s information in one transaction and a Class 4 felony at 50 or more. The Henrico complaint, as WRIC described it, involves three stolen identities, while the broader scheme it cites covers more than 70 leased Teslas.
Freezing your credit before a lease appears
The Federal Trade Commission says a credit freeze is free and blocks new credit accounts in your name, including ones you try to open yourself. You place it with Equifax, Experian and TransUnion, and you can lift it temporarily when you really are leasing a car. If an account you do not recognize shows up, the FTC says an extended fraud alert lasts seven years and requires an identity theft report from IdentityTheft.gov or a police report.
Dealers hold plenty of customer identity data too. The Auto Wire covered how the VinSolutions breach left the legal exposure with dealers under the FTC Safeguards Rule.
What to watch next
The 70-vehicle figure comes from the complaint as WRIC reported it, and nobody has proven it. The next filings will show whether the Postal Service inspector general or prosecutors bring charges beyond Zhou, and whether the court record explains how the cars were allegedly exported.
If a dealer approves a lease on a stolen identity, who should absorb the loss: the dealer, the leasing company or the person whose name is on the contract?