Woman's Toyota Won’t Start At Costco Lot. Then 2 Men In The Parking Lot Say They’re Mechanics: ‘They Look For Toyota Corollas'

A Utah hairstylist walked out of a Costco to find her boyfriend's car would not start. Then she was approached by two men in a nearby vehicle claiming to be mechanics. She has since posted a warning that the men were running a well-known scam.

Jasna’s (@jasnahooke) 4-minute, 57-second TikTok has racked up more than 447,600 views and produced more than a dozen replies from people who say the same thing happened to them, with the same suspect description and the same payment demand.

Jasna filmed it from the front seat of a borrowed car after the Toyota Corolla was towed.

The caption was a public-service-style alert: "SCAM IN AMERICAN FORK Update: Multiple people have reached out to me with the same story. They look for Toyota Corollas, pretend to help fix whatever they unplugged and then demand $200."

What Happened At Costco?

According to Jasna, she and her boyfriend were leaving the Costco at the Lehi-American Fork border in Utah County when their 2017 Toyota Corolla Sport refused to start.

Two men parked diagonally from them got out, said in Spanish that they did not speak English, and offered a jump. They had a portable jump starter that failed to wake the car. Then, in Jasna's telling, one of the men "pops open the fuse box and then he pulls something out. And he's like, ‘oh, I'm a mechanic. Like, I can work on this for you.’"

She got a bad feeling. "I have a weird feeling about this. Like, you need to stop," she told them. The man kept going, pulled out a bottle of water and began pouring it on the engine.

"I think it's really weird that we come out of here, our car's not working. And all of a sudden, magically, two mechanics are diagonally across from us and they can help us fix whatever is wrong with our car," she says in the video. When she pressed him to stop, the two men left.

Jasna's boyfriend filmed their vehicle and licence plate. The police pulled Costco's parking lot footage and, per her account, watched the two men circle the Corolla, then go underneath it. An officer at the scene told her the act would qualify as a felony if the suspects were identified.

The couple's mechanic has since told them whatever the men disconnected sits at the throttle body, though the part itself sits in the engine bay. Mechanically inclined commenters under the video pointed to the starter motor or the main fuse as the likely target.

A Second Strange Encounter At Costco

What unsettled both Jasna and the police is what happened next. While she sat in the lot with officers, she says she noticed a man parked next to her car listening to the conversation. She made a point of remembering his face.

Five hours later, when the couple returned with a mechanic friend to start the diagnosis, the same man was sitting in a vehicle directly in front of the Corolla, filming them. When her cousin began recording his licence plate and VIN, the man got out and walked into the Costco. Police were called a second time and located him inside; without independent evidence linking him to the first pair, no charges followed.

The Good Samaritan Mechanic Scam

The pattern Jasna describes is documented across multiple consumer-protection alerts. The Scambusters consumer fraud database describes a "good Samaritan mechanic" scheme in which the scammer "watches you leave your vehicle, then deliberately disables it" and then conveniently reappears claiming to be a mechanic.

A Rio Grande Credit Union consumer alert explains the structure of the grift: "The 'mechanic' disabled your car in an easy-to-fix way while you were gone so they can appear to 'fix' it."

Both sources tell consumers the right move is to refuse the offered help and call AAA or a known mechanic.

The comment thread indicates that this same scam, perhaps even run by the same people, has hit other Toyota Corolla owners in the area.

A commenter going by gigi said her 2017 Corolla had been sabotaged in the same way and a Spanish-speaking "mechanic" had asked her for $200 to fix it; she paid. Erikaortizmer, kt, Kee, and TheJennZone each described variations on the same encounter, with one saying her mother had paid $1,000 to the same operation.

A separate commenter, Sage Moon, said she had witnessed an identical scene at a Sam's Club 90 minutes from the Costco the day Jasna posted.

The Investigation Continues

Jasna's update in the caption notes that the police have the parking lot footage and that the case is open. Costco's outdoor cameras showed the suspects going under the vehicle, which is potential evidence for any future prosecution. The Corolla, as of her last reply in the comments, was still at the mechanic and still showing a fault that prevents the gas pedal from working.

Working mechanics in her thread offered consistent advice: if strangers happen to be parked next to you when your car will not start, and then identify themselves as mechanics within the first 30 seconds, it's probably not just a lucky coincidence.

Motor1 reached out to Jasna via TikTok direct message, and to Costco's corporate communications team about its parking-lot security at the Lehi store, for additional comment. We'll be sure to update this if they respond.