“DO NOT buy cars off FACEBOOK MARKETPLACE.”
A TikTok creator rented out her 2018 Toyota Camry for a few days and expected it back on a Tuesday. Instead, she ended up standing in a stranger’s driveway watching a man pull parts out of it, and he told her he had bought the car four days earlier.
Brionte (@shifilestaxes), a tax preparer whose TikTok account otherwise promotes her filing business, posted the confrontation in a one-minute, 30-second video that has drawn more than 7.9 million views.
“Hi, how are you? This is my car,” she says as she walks up. The man tells her he bought it four days ago. “I hate to hear that, because this is my car. I own this car,” she answers.
“This is a rental car,” she continues. “Whoever you bought it from, they were renting it from me. So, you gotta call them, but I’m gonna be taking this car.” She keeps going while he keeps working: “I have a rental contract and everything from them. They were supposed to return it on Tuesday.”
The Camry was in the driveway rather than on the road because it would not start. The man says it shut off and would not turn over again. “There’s a kill switch on the car, which is why it wouldn’t start,” Brionte tells him.
Then she asks a key question. “Do you have a bill of sale?” The answer: “We have the title.”
In a follow-up posted the next day, which has more than 577,500 views, Brionte says officers came out, and she left with the Camry.
“The police officer was shown the title. But they didn’t want me to see it for whatever reason but I did leave with my car!!!” she wrote in the caption.
She says she gave 911 dispatchers the photo the renter took of herself in front of the car at pickup, an IP address, and “a blank signature that you verified.”
The buyers came out of it with nothing. “They have a new family, a new kid, and they are out seven thousand dollars,” she says.
Her own cut of the rental was “three hundred, four hundred, maybe five hundred dollars.”
She has been careful about presenting the sale as fact. “I rented my vehicle to her and she sold it ALLEGEDLY,” reads a later caption.
She has been consistent on one point, however. “The individuals shown in this video WERE NOT the renter who stole my vehicle,” she added to the first two captions. “They appear to have unknowingly purchased it after it was fraudulently sold… LEAVE THEM PEOPLE ALONE.”
In a third video with more than 571,800 views, Brionte films herself filing the police report, then puts the question to a man at a tax assessor’s office who handles titles day to day. Do the ones that come in from Facebook Marketplace turn out to be bad?
“Sometimes it’s fake; sometimes it’s fraud,” he says. “Most of them are fraud.” He also describes dealers who “buy cars from the auction and then roll back the miles and put them on Marketplace.” His verdict on trying to head it off: “I try to warn my customers. They don’t listen to me.”
Officials who process title paperwork or who have to pick up the pieces when things go wrong all give the same advice.
The Bexar County, Texas, tax assessor-collector warned buyers in October 2024 that a seller advertising on social media “may not have a real title to the vehicle, or it may even be stolen,” and that where the title is fraudulent, “law enforcement will seize the vehicle.”
Buyers in that county alone had lost between $5,000 and $35,000 apiece. The office’s advice: make the seller meet you at the tax office and verify the title before any money changes hands.
The Texas DMV is blunter about private sales. “Never, ever walk away from a private sale without the title,” its guidance reads. Its title check runs a VIN through the National Motor Vehicle Title Information System, a Justice Department database set up to “prevent the introduction or reintroduction of stolen motor vehicles into interstate commerce.”
The price possibly should have raised the alarm. Kelley Blue Book puts private party values on a 2018 Camry “from about $13,950 to $17,050 depending on vehicle style,” roughly double the $7,000 the buyer handed over.
Viewers also said the price should have raised suspicions. “Especially a 2018 Camry, for $7,000? That should have been a red flag right there. At least $15,000,” wrote eunicetheresasyes.
Others went at the paperwork. “What ‘title’ did they have??” asked dopeasyari, in a comment with more than 2,300 likes.
Stephfonl1, in a comment Brionte liked, offered very useful advice: “If you do buy a car off Marketplace, meet them at the title office. They won’t even show up if it’s a scam.”
And Shannicesmith2 asked commenters to reflect on the assumptions they leaped to: “This is so sad, cause so many people thought the Spanish family were doing something wrong. Just sad they were quick to judge them.”
Motor1 reached out to Brionte via TikTok direct message and to Meta by email for comment. We’ll be sure to update this if either responds.
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