National Bank of Canada seizes Ont. woman's car by mistake

A McMaster University student living in St. Agatha, Ont. woke up to a shocking realization on Friday.

“I walked out to go to work in the morning and my car was missing,” Makayla Hahn said.

She and her family then phoned police. They assumed thieves may be to blame, but after looking through security camera footage from a neighbour, they saw a towing company attaching her 2018 Honda Civic to their truck and driving away.

“I ended up missing work because I had no way [to go in],” she said, adding that she’s not old enough to rent a car in Ontario, where the minimum age requirement is 21. “It was an awful, awful day.”

With no answer as to why it was taken, her family was able to track the car down to an OPENLANE auction lot in Brampton, Ont., thanks to help from police.

“It looks like they can sell it after 30 days. So it’s kind of a countdown trying to figure out what we can do,” Hahn explained.

The family decided to contact both the towing company and the auction lot.

“We were able to call them and ask who put the order in to have our vehicle taken and they were able to tell us it was the National Bank of Canada,” said Hahn.

This raised even more questions because no one in her family deals with National Bank.

“No, no. Quite literally, I did not even know they were a bank,” Hahn said.

Makayla Hahn's car. (Submitted)

What went wrong

The family was under the impression that the car may have a lien on it.

Hahn tracked the car back as far as possible, which is registered in her father’s name, but the history looked clean – at least from what they could see in Ontario.

“We know that the very first owner who had it in Quebec did finance it. So our guess is maybe in the transfer from Quebec to Ontario, something got missed.”

Dennis Crawford, with Crawford Lawyers in Stratford, Ont., said Hahn did the right thing by doing a thorough check on the car when she originally bought it through a private sale.

“I can say, generally, the way that a situation like this might come up is when someone sells a vehicle privately, it’s up to them to take the proceeds of the sale and use that money to pay off the car loan. And if the seller doesn’t do that, then the loan follows the car,” said Crawford.

Story takes a turn

The possibility of a lien on the car became less likely by late Monday afternoon.

By that point, Hahn had no luck getting an answer from National Bank in terms of whether there was a lien on the car from a previous owner.

“They have rejected every call that we have tried. After a couple of rings, they pick up, and hang up the phone on us,” she said.

CTV News reached out to the bank and a spokesperson finally had an answer for the family.

“This situation is the result of an error on the vehicle to be seized. We have touched base with Mr. Hahn to apologize and are in the process of returning the vehicle,” a statement reads.

It was not made clear how that error happened or how long it will be until the car is returned.

It’s an error that has left Hahn worried and without a vehicle for days.

The family said they’ll fight for some compensation from the bank.

While Hahn is relieved to finally have an answer, she hopes her car is returned just as quickly as it was taken.