Back in 2011, Fieri was the victim of grand theft auto when 16-year-old Max Wade drove the TV star’s yellow Lamborghini Gallardo off the lot of a San Francisco auto dealership. According to a 2018 post on Eater, the vehicle was valued at roughly $200,000.
A 2014 report from ABC 7 News noted that Wade put a lot of research into the crime before taking action; citing Wade’s computer records, the report mentioned that the teen Googled Lamborghinis, how to pick locks and looked into “mission impossible-style rappelling.” Surveillance footage from the dealership reportedly caught Wade scaling the building early one morning in March 2011.
It wasn’t until more than a year later that Wade was arrested though, because of an attempted murder case. In April 2012, Wade reportedly opened fire on a truck occupied by a young woman he knew and her boyfriend at the time, per ABC 7 News. When authorities eventually tracked Wade down, they apparently found Fieri’s car in his storage locker.
In 2013, after testifying in court that he did not know Wade and did not give him permission to make off with the Lamborghini, Fieri told reporters that he first heard of the theft while he was filming an episode of Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives in Chicago. “I thought it was a bad joke,” he said.
“I’m sorry to see laws get broken,” Fieri added to NBC Bay Area. “This has so many other facets that are far more important than my car. My car is a very small portion of it. There’s a bigger issue on the table.”
During Wade’s trial, Deputy District Attorney Yvette Martinez characterized Wade’s theft of the Lamborghini as an attempt to win the attention of the girl that he would later nearly kill. Martinez said that Wade “committed a celebrity crime to get the beautiful blonde girl.”
Following his trial, Wade was found guilty of attempted murder, and also convicted of auto theft and being in possession of a stolen vehicle, per an SFGate report from 2014.
At the end of the trial, Wade was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole for attempted murder, in addition to 20 years for the intentional discharge of a firearm and 16 months for stealing Fieri’s Lamborghini.
In the aforementioned report from ABC 7 News, Fieri is quoted as saying that he’d often hear from friends that they had spotted his stolen car on the road. “We would get calls all the time and I mean all the time,” he said. “I had friends call me who would say, ‘Listen, I just saw your car on the freeway.’ And I was like, believe it or not, there’s more than one yellow Lamborghini convertible probably in Northern California. And people would call and we’d get reports and my attorney would hear about it. Well, come to find out that he was driving it. Brave kid.”
