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A San Antonio towing company has agreed to pay $280,000 to settle allegations that it illegally sold or scrapped about 93 vehicles owned by US military servicemembers.

Getting into it: The Justice Department announced that Vehicle Management Solutions Inc. (VMS) signed the settlement to resolve claims it violated the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act (SCRA), a federal law that shields active-duty military members by limiting financial and civil obligations while they serve. Among those protections, a tow company can’t sell off a servicemember’s car at all unless a judge signs off on it first.

Federal officials say VMS engaged in a pattern of auctioning off or otherwise scrapping servicemembers’ vehicles without ever obtaining those required court orders, accusing the company of disposing of roughly 93 cars this way. The case took off in 2024 after a servicemember complained that VMS had towed and auctioned his vehicle while he was deployed overseas in Kosovo.

According to local reporting, VMS, which has operated San Antonio’s city impound lot, allegedly sold off the vehicles of deployed servicemembers once before, disposing of around 227 of their cars between 2011 and 2019 while running the Growdon Impound lot.

Despite that history, the city drew sharp criticism last year for handing VMS a new contract.

In a statement, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said, “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.”