An Atlanta man was able to sell some 26 stolen cars to area salvage yards before getting caught because he was moving faster than “the system” designed to catch such incidents, officials said.

Christopher Davis, 53, of Atlanta was arrested Nov. 2 for selling the vehicles between May and November to Quality Used Auto Parts and M&S Auto Parts on Roberts Road in north Fayette County, sheriff’s investigators said.

Davis would bring the vehicles in on a tow truck and forged some of the documents he used in the sales, said Investigator Brent Rowan of the Fayette County Sheriff’s Office.

Although one or two of the vehicles had been stolen from Peachtree City, most were taken from Clayton and Fulton counties along with multiple other jurisdictions, Rowan said.

The salvage dealers have to fill out a form that is sent to the state to verify the vehicle identification numbers (VINs) of each vehicle that they purchase, Rowan said. There is a lag time of about six to seven months in that process, but the businesses were able to discover recently that at least one of the vehicles Davis sold had been stolen.

That led to a call to the sheriff’s office, and Det. Aaron Fenimore began digging through paperwork at both businesses, running the vehicle’s VINs through the Georgia Crime Information Center computer network to determine how many of the vehicles sold by Davis had indeed been stolen.

In some cases, Davis sold the vehicles before the appropriate law enforcement jurisdiction was able to get the information entered on GCIC, Rowan said.

The investigation into the matter is ongoing, Rowan said.

The businesses have been “very cooperative” throughout the investigation, and both are out a significant amount of money, Rowan added.

Davis specifically targeted passenger cars in the operation, Rowan said.