This plumber is suing a dealership after his company truck ended up in the hands of purported Islamic extremists
In late 2014, Mark Oberholtzer was bombarded with phone calls. People were wondering why he's sympathizing with terrorists. That's because the Texas plumber's company truck, which he had traded into a dealer, apprently ended up in Syria, logo in tact, being used by purported extremists:
Oberholtzer is now suing AutoNation Ford Gulf Freeway, the Houston dealership, The Washington Post reports. He claims AutoNation was supposed to remove the decal, which has apparently remained on the truck even as the rest of it was repurposed. The truck had reportedly been imported to Turkey from a used car dealer in December 2013, a full year before the image of the vehicle started garnering attention online.
If there was any hope of reprieve from unwanted internet attention for Oberholtzer, it was probably dashed when 2.5 million viewers saw a photo of his truck on The Colbert Report's final episode.
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Julie Kliegman is a freelance writer based in New York. Her work has appeared in BuzzFeed, Vox, Mental Floss, Paste, the Tampa Bay Times and PolitiFact. Her cats can do somersaults.
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