NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) – A Nashville musician says he’s been reunited with more than $250,000 of his equipment stolen earlier this month.

News 2 spoke with Country singer Adam Doleac’s manager, Eric Garcia. Garcia says in a year of devastation for so many in the entertainment business, this crime hit them hard.

Doleac’s trailer was stolen on September 7 in East Nashville. The crime was captured on camera. Garcia says it all began when he got a tip about the vehicle captured on video.

“The morning Adam got the video from his place we saw it was a white Escalade. It didn’t have plates on it but we had heard another artist had his trailer stolen from Soundcheck, white Escalade and we had the plates on that,” Garcia explained.

Garcia says the vehicle was registered to someone in Kentucky. He then discovered the vehicle was listed for sale by a gentleman in an auto-group marketplace in April. Garcia says they hired a private investigator to contact the gentleman to find out to whom he sold the car.

“He sold it to a guy who matches the description in the video for $2,600 in a Walmart parking lot who said he was from Nashville. So the guy saying he was from Nashville helped us know okay, he’s probably still in Nashville,” Garcia said.

Garcia then received a tip from a friend who told him he saw a white Escalade that matched the description go into the Forest Hills Baptist Church parking lot in Bellevue and trade the trailer off to a black SUV. The friend then told Garcia he tried to follow it but could not get close enough.

Garcia then called the church to ask to see their surveillance footage.

“Sure enough they sent over footage from the trailers being switched. It was a 2002 white escalade switching off to what looked like a GMC Yukon, all black. So now we know this is like an operation. They have a plan, they take them to a certain place and switch them off. He then said they headed South toward Franklin,” Garcia explained.

From there, Garcia began searching Facebook marketplace for trailers.

“I did not find our trailer, but I did come across the profile that had multiple profiles with the same name and no profile picture and no information on Facebook. It was really fishy. When you looked at his commerce at what he was selling, it was like four or five trailers,” said Garcia.

Garcia said it didn’t sit right with him that this one person was selling so many trailers online. He decided to follow his instincts and asked the private investigator he’d hired to find out more information about this person. The investigator provided Garcia a few details, stating that the individual was 19-years-old with a warrant out for his arrest for forgery.

Garcia planned a meeting with the individual and stated he was interested in buying a trailer. Ten minutes before the meeting, the individual changed the meeting location. Garcia then called Franklin police to inform them of the situation.

“I’m on his street and I see a blacked-out Yukon with a hitch on the back and I am following it. I’m at a stoplight and I got a picture of the license plate and then he just takes off,” said Garcia.

Garcia then called police again and ran the plates on the Yukon. This led them to identify the person the car was registered to. Garcia says they then enlisted two men with Stein Protection, Chris Reed & Adam Schlein, a company known for handling musician security.

They devised a plan to meet up with the seller again. The individual told Reed & Schlein to meet him at a Tractor Supply but changed that location ten minutes before the meeting time. They then went to the newly selected location and met the individual to inquire about Doleac’s stolen trailer and gear.

“He ended up cooperating and leading us to it. I think when Chris described what was in the trailer the kid said he had two trailers with that kind of stuff in it. It ended up being ours which we recovered and it ended up being Hudson Moore’s whose stuff was stolen. They sold his trailer but we got all of his gear back, and that we took back to Soundcheck,” explained Garcia.

Garcia said the gear was found on a farm in Franklin.

“This family has 1,000 acres of farm out in Franklin. It was in the middle of some back road we would not have found it. He’s got probably 25-30 trailers out there and you just wouldn’t know,” said Garcia.

Garcia says this was an extremely poor time for something like this to happen for Doleac.

“We almost cancelled his hometown Hattiesburg show when he played before the football game. At 8 p.m. last Friday we called and said we are going to do this. We felt like if there was any show he would do, that was the show he was going to get the most support at. We pulled it off with rented gear,” said Garcia.

“When I got the call from Chris and he asked if we were ready to get our stuff back, it was like we won the Super bowl. It literally was like Christmas Day. We all jumped on a Facetime,” said Garcia.

There is a lot of information to this but I want everyone to know we have possession of our trailer and all of our gear!

— Adam Doleac (@AdamDoleacMusic) September 14, 2021

“It was terrible. That is your income… that is your livelihood and all of ours. Band, crew, mine and Adam’s. To get that taken away, we were just like wondering what else is next,” said Garcia.

Garcia told News 2 police are out right now searching for more trailers. Garcia says he’s proud to be a part of this community.

“Who knows how many we are going to recover. This thing could have recovered 20 people’s stolen trailers. I am glad we were a part of that, it’s huge you know. I am excited to see what happens at the end of this,” said Garcia.