Plumber Sues Ford Dealer After His Truck Ends Up With Syrian Extremists

carscoops.com It’s not uncommon for a used company car to wind up – at one point – in some obscure location, but when it gets transformed in a war-machine for Syrian extremists, it does raises some questions. CNN reports that Mark Oberholtzer’s reputation quickly went down the drain when his former company truck – still bearing the decals and telephone number of his plumbing business – appeared in a widely shared picture of Islamist militants firing an anti-aircraft gun from the back of it. That’s a huge leap from plumbing supplies it used to carry. The black Ford F-250 was apparently traded in to the AutoNation Ford Gulf Freeway dealership in Houston three years ago, as Oberholtzer left the car with the expectation that the dealer would remove the decals. But, unfortunately for him and his business, that never happened and now, Oberholtzer’s plumbing company is suing the dealership for more than $1 million in financial losses and damages to his business' reputation. After the photo went viral with the decal still attached, the man received thousand of phone calls, many of which harassing and threatening, as Oberholzer's lawyer wrote in the lawsuit filed on December 9 in Harris County, Texas: "By the end of the day, Mark-1's office, Mark-1's business phone, and Mark's personal cell had received over 1,000 phone calls from around the nation. These phone calls were in large part harassing and contained countless threats of violence, property harm, injury and even death." As you'd expect, Oberholzer said all this could have been avoided if the dealership had just remove the decals.