San Antonio Towing Company Pays $280K After Auctioning 93 Servicemembers' Vehicles

On May 28, 2026, the Department of Justice announced a settlement with Vehicle Management Solutions Inc. (VMS), a San Antonio, Texas towing company that allegedly auctioned or scrapped approximately 93 vehicles owned by active-duty servicemembers without obtaining the court orders required under the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act.

The settlement total is $280,000: $220,000 in compensation to affected servicemembers and a $60,000 civil penalty to the U.S. Treasury.

This is the second major DOJ towing enforcement action in three months. In March, the DOJ sued S&K Towing of San Clemente, California for selling 148 vehicles towed from Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton. Two towing companies, near two major military installations, with the same fact pattern: vehicles auctioned without checking military status or obtaining court orders. The DOJ now has an enforcement focus area, and it is towing.

What Happened

San Antonio is home to Joint Base San Antonio, the largest joint military installation in the Department of Defense. JBSA includes Randolph Air Force Base, Lackland Air Force Base, and Fort Sam Houston, with a daily population exceeding 80,000 servicemembers, dependents, and DoD civilians. Any towing company operating in or around San Antonio is, statistically speaking, going to tow vehicles owned by servicemembers.

Under 50 U.S.C. Section 3958, a person holding a storage, repair, or cleaning lien on the property of an SCRA-protected servicemember cannot sell or dispose of that property during the period of military service without a court order. The provision exists because servicemembers are often deployed, in training, or stationed away from their vehicles and cannot respond to lien notices on civilian timelines.

VMS, according to the DOJ, never obtained a court order. The agency’s complaint alleges a “pattern or practice of auctioning or otherwise disposing of vehicles owned by SCRA-protected service members.” Across roughly 93 vehicles, that pattern played out over a multi-year period.

The Investigation Was Triggered by One Complaint

The case started with a single servicemember. While deployed to Kosovo in 2024, his vehicle was towed and auctioned by VMS. When he returned, he filed a complaint. The DOJ investigation that followed uncovered 92 additional violations.

This is worth noting for any business handling servicemember property: enforcement does not require a class action or a high-volume complaint pipeline to start. A single deployed soldier filing a single complaint can open a multi-year portfolio review. The investigation looked at every vehicle VMS sold or scrapped during the relevant period, identified which owners were on active duty, and built the case from there.

The DOJ’s running total reflects how systematic this approach has become: since 2011, the agency has obtained over $489 million in monetary relief for more than 152,000 servicemembers through SCRA enforcement. That total has incremented twice in the past two months alone (ADT in April pushed it to $488M; this case pushes it to $489M).

The “Pattern or Practice” Allegation

The DOJ’s complaint against VMS uses specific litigation language: “pattern or practice of auctioning or otherwise disposing of vehicles owned by SCRA-protected service members.” This is not casual phrasing.

A “pattern or practice” allegation is a specific legal standard the DOJ uses when alleging that a defendant’s conduct is systemic rather than incidental. It triggers broader injunctive relief, supports civil penalty enhancement, and signals that the investigation is treating the violations as institutional rather than individual.

For comparison: when the DOJ pursues a single bad eviction or a single illegal repo, the complaint typically alleges a discrete violation. When the agency wants to address systemic non-compliance, the complaint alleges a pattern or practice. The S&K Towing complaint also used this language. So did Greystar. So did PRG Real Estate.

If your operation handles enough servicemember property to constitute a “pattern,” and you have no verification process, the legal exposure is qualitatively different from a one-off violation.

What the Settlement Requires

Under the consent order, VMS must:

• Pay $220,000 in compensation to the affected servicemembers
• Pay a $60,000 civil penalty to the U.S. Treasury
• Implement SCRA-compliant policies and procedures
• Train staff on SCRA requirements

As Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon stated: “When members of our Armed Forces are called to fight for our country, they should not have to return home to find that their car has been illegally sold.”

The case was handled by the DOJ Civil Rights Division’s Housing and Civil Enforcement Section.

The Towing Pattern: What’s Different About These Cases

Towing cases follow a different operational pattern than financial-services SCRA cases, and the differences matter for compliance.

The trigger is physical, not contractual. A bank knows when a customer takes out a loan. A landlord knows when a tenant signs a lease. A towing company encounters servicemember property when a vehicle is parked somewhere it shouldn’t be, often with no prior relationship between the company and the owner. There is no application, no intake form, no opportunity to flag military status at the front end.

The timeline is short. State storage-lien statutes typically allow disposal of unclaimed vehicles within 30 to 60 days. Towing companies are incentivized to move inventory quickly, which means the window between intake and auction is narrow. Without a fast verification process, the company often auctions the vehicle before any check happens, if a check happens at all.

The owner is often unreachable. A servicemember deployed overseas may not even know their vehicle has been towed for weeks. By the time they discover the loss, the vehicle has been sold to a third party in good faith, complicating any remedy.

These operational realities are exactly why the SCRA mandates a court order before disposal. Section 3958 puts the burden on the towing company to verify, because the servicemember cannot defend themselves.

What This Means for Towing and Storage Operators

Three immediate compliance takeaways:

1. Run a DMDC check before every disposal, not after a complaint. The Defense Manpower Data Center maintains a free public verification site. A check takes under a minute. If the vehicle owner is active-duty, you cannot dispose of the vehicle without a court order. That is the rule, and it applies regardless of state storage-lien statutes.

2. Document every check. If you verify military status and the owner is not active-duty, save the DMDC certificate. If a complaint surfaces later, the timestamped certificate is the evidence that you acted in good faith on a verified record. Without it, you have no defense.

3. Train staff on the court-order requirement. Most towing operators are unfamiliar with SCRA storage-lien protections, because they were added later and apply narrowly. Staff who handle lien dispositions need to know the rule, know how to verify military status, and know to escalate when verification flags an active-duty owner.

The civil penalty in the VMS case was $60,000, plus $220,000 in restitution. By comparison, the cost of integrating DMDC verification into a towing company’s lien-disposal workflow is functionally zero. The math is straightforward.

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civrel.io verifies military status against the Department of Defense database, generates audit-ready compliance certificates for every adverse action, and integrates with your operational workflow. To check whether the vehicles or property in your inventory belong to servicemembers, request a free scan.