A thief can steal a brand-new Cadillac Escalade from your driveway in under 30 seconds using a device smaller than a smartphone — purchased on Amazon — while you sleep inside your house, and General Motors has known about this for years and said nothing.

The Defect GM Built Into Every Single One

A Security System That Unlocks for Criminals

Every Chevrolet Tahoe, Suburban, and Silverado. Every GMC Yukon, Yukon XL, and Sierra. Every Cadillac Escalade and Escalade ESV produced by General Motors from 2010 to the present that uses keyless entry technology shares the same flaw. The key fob communicates to the vehicle using low-frequency radio waves, and those waves can be intercepted by a device the size of a cell phone bought online for a few hundred dollars.

The theft works like this: a criminal stands near your front door — close enough to pick up the signal your key fob broadcasts even while sitting on a hook inside your home. A “relay” or “cloning” device captures that signal and transmits it to a second device near the vehicle. The car’s computer, believing the real key is present, unlocks the doors and allows the engine to start. No windows broken. No alarms triggered. No evidence you were robbed until you walk outside in the morning.

According to the complaint, the entire process takes 20 to 30 seconds. The 2023 GMC Sierra 1500 owner’s manual, cited directly in the lawsuit, confirms the keyless system can function up to 60 meters — nearly 200 feet — away from the vehicle. That range is not a feature for convenience. In the hands of a criminal with a relay device, it is a master key that works on every qualifying GM vehicle ever made.

The Second Hole in the Wall: The OBDII Port

The hackable key fob is only half the story. The Class Vehicles also contain a second vulnerability: the OBDII diagnostic port, a standard vehicle interface that GM left insufficiently protected. Thieves can access this port, connect a handheld device purchased online, program a brand-new key fob on the spot, and drive off. The complaint notes this has spawned an entire ecosystem of tutorial videos and step-by-step guides on social media showing amateur thieves exactly how to do it.

The lawsuit cites a 2024 news report from Plano, Texas, where police cracked an auto theft ring responsible for $2.5 million ($2.5 million — enough to fully fund a local fire station for several years) in stolen GM trucks in a single month. These were not professional car thieves running sophisticated operations. They were opportunists using tools anyone can buy online, exploiting a defect GM built into every vehicle it sold for over a decade.

Police believe thieves have started using key clone devices to steal new models. The devices are about the size of cell phones. They are capable of picking up the signal of a nearby key fob and cloning it, giving thieves access to the car.

Class Action Complaint, Paragraph 12 — Citing Law Enforcement Reports

These are not low-volume niche vehicles. The Silverado alone sold 560,265 units in 2024. Every single one of those buyers received a product with a known, unfixed, concealed security defect. Every one of them paid full price for a vehicle GM internally knew was a target.

The Non-Financial Ledger

What Money Cannot Repay

On the morning of November 9, 2022, Jeremy Burkett walked outside and his truck was gone. Three days before, he had married his partner. The day after the theft, his wife was scheduled to begin chemotherapy treatment for breast cancer. The timing was not ironic. It was catastrophic. The family had one vehicle, and now it was gone, taken silently from their driveway in under a minute by someone who may have stood near their front door and read the signal from a key fob hanging on a hook inside their home.

Burkett filed a police report. He filed an insurance claim. He borrowed his wife’s vehicle — the same vehicle she needed to get to cancer treatment. Every day he drove it to work, he sat with the knowledge that if a medical emergency occurred while he was gone, she had no car. That is not an inconvenience. That is a fear that burrows into every quiet moment of a person’s day. The lawsuit acknowledges this plainly: Burkett “constantly worried about what would happen if his wife had a medical emergency while Plaintiff was at work with the only household vehicle.”

The insurance company eventually paid out for the total loss. But here is what the payout did not account for: between the date of the theft and the date of the settlement, car prices had spiked dramatically. The compensation Burkett received could not buy the same caliber of truck he had lost. Before GM’s defect touched his life, he was months away from paying off a near-luxury vehicle. After it, he carried a new car payment on a vehicle he never intended to own. GM’s silence turned a paid-for truck into a monthly debt.

The violation did not end there. When personal documents were taken from the truck — items with his home address on them — Burkett entered a new kind of fear. He does not know who has his address. He has said he worries whether he is safe inside his own home. This is the texture of harm that never appears in a dollar figure on a damages chart. GM’s decision to hide a defect it knew about created the conditions under which a cancer patient’s husband lay awake at night wondering if the person who took his truck might come back for more.

“Plaintiff experienced inconvenience and emotional distress related to the Theft Prone Defect. The theft occurred approximately three days after his wedding on November 6, 2022, and one day before his wife began chemotherapy for breast cancer.”

Burkett is one named plaintiff. The complaint seeks to represent a class of tens of thousands. Each one of those class members has a version of this story — a missed shift because a truck was gone, a child who couldn’t get to school, a contractor who couldn’t get to a job site, a caregiver who lost the vehicle they used to transport a family member who can’t walk. GM sold 2,547,000 vehicles in the United States in 2019 alone. The company’s 2020 North American automotive net sales reached $96.733 billion ($96.733 billion — roughly equivalent to what 1.8 million American workers earn over the course of their entire careers). For every dollar of that revenue, GM chose to protect its profit margin over the security of the people who paid it.

There is also the sustained psychological tax of owning a vehicle you know is a target. The lawsuit captures this precisely in its description of Burkett’s experience with his replacement 2023 GMC Sierra: he wonders every time he parks if the location is safe enough. He does not feel comfortable leaving a USB cord in the vehicle. He drives a truck he would not have chosen, bought under duress, and still carries the anxiety of a man who knows the defect that cost him once was never fixed. GM sold him the same broken security system twice. The second time, he knew it was broken. He knew because he had already paid the price once.

Legal Receipts

The Words They Cannot Take Back

GM intended to mislead, and in fact misled, ordinary reasonable consumers — including Plaintiff and the Class — through its omissions, active concealment and/or failure to warn of the Defect. GM did so with the intent to generate and increase sales of the Class Vehicles, thereby increasing its share of the automobile market and avoiding the expense of reprograming the key fob security systems.

Class Action Complaint, Paragraph 100 — Fraud by Concealment Allegation

GM routinely instructs its GM Dealerships around the United States to deny a request for repair of the Defect. These communications and directives are sent from its headquarters to GM dealerships in all 51 jurisdictions implicated in this suit. GM has failed and/or refused to do so — often conveying to Vehicle owners that the failed parts comprising the Defect are considered “maintenance” and/or “wear” items and are therefore not covered under warranty.

Class Action Complaint, Paragraphs 200 and 219 — Breach of Warranty and Fraud Counts

GM concealed and suppressed material facts concerning the Class Vehicles, the Defect, and its propensity for the Class Vehicles to be stolen. GM accomplished this by denying the existence of the Defect.

Class Action Complaint, Paragraph 161 — Texas DTPA Violation Count

GM’s acts were done maliciously, oppressively, deliberately, with intent to defraud, and in reckless disregard of the rights and well-being of Plaintiff and the Class members in order to enrich GM. GM’s conduct warrants an assessment of punitive damages in an amount sufficient to deter such conduct in the future.

Class Action Complaint, Paragraph 224 — Fraud by Concealment Prayer for Relief

The evidence shows that cars operated by unauthorized persons are far more likely to cause unreasonable risk of accident, personal injury, and death than those which are driven by authorized individuals… the approximate rate for stolen cars would be some 200 times the normal accident rate for other vehicles.

Class Action Complaint, Paragraph 72 — Citing 1968 DOJ Study Incorporated into Federal Safety Standard FMVSS No. 114

Other automobile manufacturers, like Jaguar and Range Rover, have developed ultra-wide band protection to counter relay car theft, while Defendant has remained silent and failed to act or even notify the public of the safety risks.

Class Action Complaint, Paragraph 60 — Industry Comparison on Security Standards

The Federal Safety Standard GM Is Accused of Violating

The lawsuit anchors its safety argument in FMVSS No. 114, a federal standard that has existed since 1968 and explicitly requires every vehicle manufacturer to install “a starting system which, whenever the key is removed from the starting system prevents: (a) The normal activation of the vehicle’s engine or motor; and (b) Either steering, or forward self-mobility, of the vehicle, or both.” The complaint argues that a system vulnerable to relay cloning cannot genuinely prevent unauthorized activation — making every affected GM vehicle a potential violation of a federal safety standard that predates the moon landing.

The safety standard exists because the federal government proved, more than 50 years ago, that stolen vehicles are 200 times more likely to cause accidents than legally operated vehicles. That is the regulatory backdrop against which GM’s silence sits. This was not an unknown risk. It was a known, federally documented, legally prohibited risk. GM knew. The government knew. The only people who were not told were the ones writing the checks.

Societal Impact Mapping

Public Safety: 200 Times the Risk, Zero Warnings

The 1968 Department of Justice study cited in the lawsuit is not ancient history — it is the scientific foundation for a federal safety law still in force today. That study found that stolen vehicles are involved in accidents at approximately 200 times the rate of non-stolen vehicles. In 1966 alone, an estimated 94,000 stolen cars were involved in accidents, and more than 18,000 of those accidents resulted in personal injury. The DOT’s conclusion was unambiguous: reducing auto theft “would not only reduce the number of injuries and deaths among those who steal cars, it would also protect the many innocent members of the public who are killed and injured by stolen cars each year.”

The complaint reports that in Texas in 2024, the Chevrolet Silverado 1500 was the most stolen vehicle in the state, with just under 6,500 units stolen. The GMC Sierra 1500 ranked second, with more than 4,000 thefts. These numbers represent vehicles that — once stolen — become high-speed hazards in the hands of joy-riders, criminals fleeing law enforcement, and anyone using them as getaway cars. The same DOT analysis from 1968 noted that “the large majority of car thieves are amateurs, almost half of whom are engaged in so-called ‘joy-riding.'” That 50-year-old finding is still accurate — it is exactly what the complaint describes: anyone with a phone-sized device and a YouTube tutorial can now steal a $60,000 Silverado.

The public safety dimension extends beyond the original owner. A stolen GM truck driven recklessly through a neighborhood endangers pedestrians, cyclists, school children, and other drivers who have no relationship to GM, no knowledge of the defect, and no recourse if they are injured. GM’s decision to sell millions of vehicles with a known, fixable security flaw is a public health decision with consequences that radiate outward through entire communities.

Economic Inequality: A Defect That Punishes Working People Most

The lawsuit makes an observation that most corporations hope their customers never fully internalize: “For most Americans, the purchase or lease of a motor vehicle is their second largest financial transaction, following only the purchase or lease of a home.” GM sold trucks marketed as reliable, high-quality, safe investments to people who spent years saving for them. The Chevrolet Silverado is a work truck. The GMC Sierra is a work truck. These are not weekend toys for wealthy hobbyists. They are the vehicles that contractors load with tools before sunrise, that nurses drive to night shifts, that families load with car seats and groceries. When one of these trucks disappears in 30 seconds from a driveway, it does not just create an inconvenience. It destroys a family’s financial stability.

The economic injury compounds in layers. First, the vehicle is gone. Second, even insured owners face a deductible — often $500 to $1,000 ($500 to $1,000 — a week’s take-home pay for millions of American workers). Third, as Burkett’s own case illustrates, insurance payouts reflect the vehicle’s pre-theft market value, not the replacement cost in a market with inflated prices. Fourth, the experience drives up insurance premiums for years afterward. Fifth, during the gap between theft and replacement, the owner faces the cost of alternative transportation. The lawsuit identifies all of these as direct harms caused by GM’s concealment: “loss of value, loss of use of the vehicles, repair costs, insurance deductible costs, higher insurance premiums, lost time, and other inconvenience and anguish.”

Meanwhile, GM reported North American net automotive sales of $96.733 billion ($96.733 billion — more than the gross domestic product of most countries in the world) in 2020. The company sold 2,547,000 vehicles in the United States in 2019. It describes itself as “the market share leader in North America.” The calculation the lawsuit implies is brutal in its simplicity: fixing the key fob security systems would cost GM money. Hiding the defect and continuing to sell the vehicles at full price made GM money. GM chose the option that made it money. Every family that lost a truck, every cancer patient who lost access to transportation, every worker who lost a day of wages — their loss was GM’s gain.

The lawsuit also raises a structural inequality embedded in GM’s warranty refusals. When owners brought their complaint to dealerships, GM instructed those dealerships to deny the repair claim. The company characterized the defect as a “maintenance” or “wear” item — the same framing corporations use when they want to shift the cost of a known defect onto the consumer. Wealthier vehicle owners can absorb these costs. Working-class families often cannot. The defect affected every GM truck owner, but the financial devastation landed hardest on people with fewer resources to weather the storm.

The Math of Staying Silent

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