Feds indict six in multi-state car theft ring tied to Prince George's County

Prince George’s County sat squarely inside a car-theft pipeline that investigators say ran from Washington, D.C., and Maryland into Pennsylvania and, ultimately, overseas. Federal prosecutors said the ring was tied to more than 30 stolen vehicles in Prince George’s County, giving the county a direct stake in a case that stretched well beyond a routine auto-theft arrest.

Six people were charged in the 15-count indictment unsealed on April 22, 2026. The publicly named defendants were Jacob Hernandez of Los Angeles; Dustin Wetzel of Woodbridge, Virginia; James Young of Hyattsville; Khobe David of Upper Marlboro; and Chance Clark of Waldorf. One additional defendant remains a fugitive, and five of the six were already in custody. Prince George’s County police assisted the Metropolitan Police Department, the FBI Washington Field Office, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office Criminal Investigations Unit in the year-long investigation.

Prosecutors said the group stole at least 20 cars in the Washington metropolitan area and Pennsylvania, while law enforcement kept digging into more than 100 vehicle thefts in the District and more than 30 in Prince George’s County. D.C. police said the same crew was connected to 117 vehicle thefts in the District in 2025, about 20% of all motor vehicle thefts reported in the city so far that year.

The alleged method was highly organized and increasingly familiar to theft investigators. Prosecutors said the suspects used electronic devices to reprogram cars so they would accept previously blank key fobs, with newer Honda Civics, Honda CR-Vs, Acura TLXs and Acura RDXs among the main targets. Once the vehicles were stolen, investigators said they were moved to storage spots, including a parking garage in Southeast Washington, where license plates were swapped, vehicle identification numbers were obscured and GPS or Bluetooth systems were disabled before transport.

Officials said the cars were then sold to buyers in the United States and Ghana. Investigators also executed a search warrant at an automobile storage facility in Decatur, Georgia, which they believed was linked to the ring, showing how far the operation reached beyond the DMV. NBC Washington reported that the key-programming tools could be bought online for about $500 and that shipping containers were allegedly mislabeled as furniture before being sent overseas.

For Prince George’s drivers, the case underscores a narrow but serious target list: late-model Honda and Acura owners in neighborhoods from Hyattsville to Upper Marlboro were inside the footprint of a theft network that used local streets as a launch point, then funneled the cars through storage sites and out of the region.