An Avis Budget Car Rental employee in Syracuse, New York set up their own ‘Carbnb’ rental platform using the company’s cars. They reportedly stole 47 vehicles. And apparently reconciliation at the company is so bad that it took 3 months for the scheme to be detected. Avis went from Budget to overbudget, losing over $1 million in vehicles, while an ex-employee’s startup worked to steal-it-and-scale.
Milton W. Thompson III is currently wanted in connection with the theft-and-rent scheme that went on June through August. 42 of the vehicles have been recovered. Police have arrested several other people for unlawful use of a motor vehicle related to the case. Thompson is being charged with grand larceny in the second degree and scheme to defraud in the first degree.
Details of how the scheme worked haven’t been released. However,
- A current/very‑recent employee with system and yard knowledge can move cars, spoofing or bypassing contract steps, might exploit “internal use,” “shop,” or “shuttle” statuses for vehicles to take the units off the ready‑line.
- Many airport locations rely on physical key walls/lockboxes that are only as strong as their audit trail. Once a key is in an insider’s pocket, the car is gone.
- Lagged inventory reconciliation, reconciling fleet counts at shift end or overnight. But a months‑long window here allowed losses to compound before the Aug. 17 exception report that triggered the complaint. If you’re counting daily, you don’t lose 47 cars.
- Not every rental unit has active telematics/immobilization tied to the rental system. If units aren’t geofenced in real time, recovery is reactive rather than preventive.
One observer notes that “insider risk > perimeter risk. Your biggest vulnerability already has a badge and a login.” In turn, instead of fleet optimization Avis had fleet vaporization.
A less egregious version of this probably happens a lot.
Multiple times at JFK and LGA, I’ve:
– turned in my car
– had it checked back out
– had it turned back in before the 24 hour mark so no additional rate was incurred
– however, I was sent a bill for toll bridges that I didn’t cross
Avis did resolve it but it took up some of my time in each case. Those bridges are not cheap!
Hertz would have arrested the renters and given the employee a bonus
He shoulda just done crypto scams like our President.
So that’s why I show up with a reservation and there’s no cars available…
Oh jeez I’ve been avoiding Hertz but should I be worried about Avis?
I had this happen one time when I was returning the car at ATL and there was nobody to scan it in. I was told that they’ll check it in later. But it didn’t happen for two days. I had to call in and since it’s still shown as being rented by me, I could track the car. I had to argue with the agent on the phone that the tracking shows that the car is in their rental center lot.
Eventually they got it fixed. Nowadays I don’t leave until I get the email receipt.
So, Milton Junior thought it was a good idea to name the kid Milton III?
Damn, I wish it had been Hertz.
Over a million dollars is second degree grand larceny? What does it take to make first degree, a billion?
He may have shown the car as idle (awaiting repair, sent to repair shop, awaiting parts, etc) in the mean time, he rents them out. Then, one of the unauthorized vehicles is in an accident, the manager gets a call from the police, the excuses don’t add up, it hits the fan!
Also, a car is returned by a customer, but the ticket is not closed out as the agent says, We’ll send it to you later”, and the car rolls out as an unauthorized vehicle for a day or two.
Moral of the story, INSIST on the conformation text or email before leaving the rental garage as the practice of issuing a paper receipt has stopped.
The burden is now on the customer to prove return of the vehicle.
If in doubt, think Avis!!
@Christian — Reminds me of the quote attributed to oil tycoon J. Paul Getty: “If you owe the bank $100, that’s your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that’s the bank’s problem.”
Meanwhile, 38 Hertz renters were heard screaming from inside the country jail. Something about “But I returned the car, dammit….”
What is interesting here is that even though the story involves the theft of Avis cars, a significant number of people commenting here made Hertz the subject of what they posted. Hertz has a significant brand name problem with a segment of the public and they’re going to have to either solve it or get used to fewer of their cars being rented.
Give Hertz credit they avoid this problem by charging all customers with vehicle theft.
It is AMAZING! Anytime I look at comments on here the same fools are always represented. It makes me wonder if they have jobs or ever even travel. Seriously, get a l I f e.
@Wolfie52 — You first.
@Wolfie52 – ever since this blog started sending literally all of my comments to a moderation queue, robbing me of the instant gratification of seeing my insights post immediately, I have stopped posting comments
should this policy of moderation continue to hold, this blog’s readership and revenue will decline sharply and I will have no sympathy because of the self-infliction
all my latest insights are on One Mile at a Time
As a local, the car rental/passenger parking garage is less than secure to begin with (there was an article from a few years back that reported that there had been multiple car thefts from the garage prior to this incident that likely involved some sort of a theft ring) and according to other employees, the rental car cleaning process itself leaves opportunities for anyone (not just employees) to just walk up and take a car without anyone noticing or immediately realizing the car was missing. For instance, there’s a single cleaner. They have multiple vehicles to clean. They finish cleaning a car, drive it to a pick-up spot, then park it for another employee to come drive it back around to the garage. The cleaner doesn’t wait with the car to do an in-person key transfer; they just leave the car with the keys in it and go back around to clean the next vehicle. Sometimes there are multiple cars waiting to be picked up and driven back to the garage so no one’s really paying too close attention to what’s going in and what’s coming out. There’s reportedly also no gate or badge in/out scanners for that lot to verify if it’s an employee taking the vehicle or which employee it is. Not saying this is for sure how it happened, but it’s a definite possibility. Dude probably saw a glaring security flaw, got some buddies involved and used it to his advantage.