The Prius Incident Looks More and More Like a Scam

As more information comes out about Jim Sikes, the driver of the supposedly runaway Prius in San Diego County, the more it looks like the whole incident was the set-up to a scam:

Some of the best reporting thus far on the Toyota sudden acceleration recall has been done by Gawker.com's Jalopnik, an auto blog.

Jalopnik's latest scoop is an interview with the former business partner of Jim Sikes, owner of the runaway Prius that caught the nation's attention last week when he claimed his Toyota wouldn't stop no matter what he did while zooming along at 90+ mph on a freeway.

Sikes' account of the incident was uncritically reported by journalists, and seemed on the verge of becoming the signature event in the Toyota sudden acceleration firestorm, especially since it occurred the same day as the Japanese automaker went on the offensive with a detailed critique of a damaging ABC News report that it had duplicated sudden acceleration in a Toyota.

Now comes Sikes' former business partner, William Sweet, who, according to Jalopnik, "says he went into business with Sikes, together opening up a paralegal services company called AAA California Aid in 1997. Sweet operated the main office and Sikes ran one in Los Banos, California. Sweet alleges numerous incidents of fraud and theft involving Sikes led him to dissolve their partnership, including an incident in which Sikes sent an employee to break into the main office to steal payment records."

Sweet told Jalopnik's Matt Hardigree that "As soon as I heard the words 'Jim Sikes,' I immediately woke up out of a dead sleep and thought, 'uh oh, what the hell is this guy up to now?' He's trying to do a scam, and get in on that lawsuit for the Toyota thing, that's immediately what I thought."

There was a day and age when the media wouldn't just take someone's account of an incident as fact, but would actually question and investigate it. Those days are gone. If an incident matches up with the preferred story line the media is following (i.e. Toyotas, made by an evil foreign car company, are prone to runaway with their owners) no further examination is needed.

However, the world is full of car guys who upon reading this story immediately see the many flaws in it. I was suspicious from the start because there are some very simple things you can do to stop a runaway car. Think "N" for "Neutral". Problem solved.

I don't know what end game Sikes had planned for this whole thing, and maybe he's backed off on any lawsuit threat because of the publicity he's gotten, but I think in the end this will end badly for him. If they examine his car and find nothing wrong with it he should be cited for reckless driving and interfering with law enforcement.