An Irvine man orchestrated what amounted to a car wash scheme, buying stolen cars and trucks and reselling them with fake identifiers, police allege.
Zihua Zhang, 37, was arrested Thursday while driving a Dodge Durango SRT that Irvine police said had been stolen. At his residence in Woodbridge, police said they found a jackpot: a stolen purple McLaren valued at hundreds of thousands of dollars.
An Irvine Police Department detective had been following a car theft operation, which led to the arrest. Zhang is accused of buying stolen luxury cars, replacing their vehicle identification numbers with fakes, and selling them.
The Durango SRT that Zhang was driving when he was stopped Thursday had an altered VIN plate, police said in a statement.
Along with the McLaren, police said they found fraudulent VIN plates, license plates and checks at Zhang's residence, as well as three unregistered firearms.
He was booked into the Orange County Jail. Irvine police did not reveal Monday whether Zhang remained in custody.
