Mate Rimac Posts Footage of Someone Opening a Bugatti Chiron’s Door Near Zagreb Under the Text ‘Hmm, anyone looking?’ — Now Intent Decides the Penalty

Rimac Group founder Mate Rimac posted the footage himself. In the Instagram clip, a person in a hooded top walks up to a dark blue Bugatti Chiron at a campus outside Zagreb, Croatia, and opens the door. Rimac tagged it Kerestinec, captioned it “Ultimate joyride loading” and laid the text “Hmm, anyone looking?” over the video.

The clip is a phone recording of a security-monitoring screen. The on-screen date reads Wednesday, October 28, 2026, and one frame carries a time of 4:23:28 PM and an “Unusual Activity” label. Tabs along the bottom are named “Campus Unutra 1” and “Campus Unutra 2.” In the frames I watched, the person approaches the Chiron from behind and opens a door; in later frames the car sits at a different angle beside a gray car, tail lights lit.

A second Rimac reel, “About that stolen Chiron story…”, is a spoken video tagged to the same place. It has no captions and I could not hear its audio, so nothing here is attributed to what Rimac says in it.

What police have put on the record

The Styria state police press page listed releases dated October 28 to 30 on a Graz jewelry store burglary, a cannabis find in Stainz, a tram incident in Graz and a graduation ceremony in Murau. None concerned a Bugatti. I also found no release from Croatian police or prosecutors. A suspect’s age, a route through Slovenia, an arrest in Austria, whether the key was in the car and any decision on charges are therefore unconfirmed. They are not in the two Instagram posts I could review or in any police statement I could locate.

How Austrian law separates a joyride from a theft

Whether any part of this case reaches an Austrian court is unconfirmed. If it does, the label decides the exposure. Under § 127 of the Austrian criminal code, theft requires taking another person’s movable property with intent to unlawfully enrich oneself or a third party by appropriating it, and carries up to six months in prison or a fine of up to 360 daily rates. Section 128(2) raises that to one to ten years when the stolen item is worth more than €300,000.

Section 136 covers the other reading, taking a motor vehicle into use without the owner’s consent. The base penalty is the same six months or 360 daily rates. It rises to up to two years if the taker gained control of the vehicle through the aggravated-theft acts listed in §§ 129 to 131, or if the damage to the vehicle, its cargo or the operating materials consumed exceeds €5,000, and to up to three years above €300,000 in damage. Fuel counts as an operating material, and a tank of it is nowhere near €5,000.

Any Chiron is worth far more than €300,000, so the stakes are lopsided. A prosecutor who can prove intent to appropriate the car is in the one-to-ten-year bracket. One who can prove only a joyride faces a six-month ceiling unless damage or an aggravated act enters the case. Croatian law governs a taking on Croatian soil and has its own theft provisions, which I could not pull from the official text, so this section covers Austria only.

What to watch next

A statement from Croatian police, a prosecutor’s office or Styria’s police would settle who was detained, what he is accused of and under which law. Until one appears, the only primary documents are Rimac’s own posts.

Six months for a joyride, up to ten years for a theft, and the line between them is what the man was thinking. How would you prove that to a jury?

About the Author

Shawn Henry

Administrator

Shawn Henry has spent years writing about cars, and it shows—not in a resume kind of way, but in how he talks about them. He's the type who'll notice the weird trim option nobody remembers and actually know why it mattered. At Backfire News, he covers pretty much the whole spectrum: off-road trucks and trail builds, performance cars, racing, and the collector market. He's comfortable getting into the technical weeds, but he never forgets that most people read about cars because cars are fun, not because they want a spec sheet. His beat runs from classic and collector vehicles to overlanding culture, modified performance builds, new automotive tech, and the industry news that actually affects what ends up in your driveway. Mostly, though, Shawn thinks the best car stories are about people—the builds they pour money into, the road trips, the communities that form around a shared obsession. That's the stuff he likes writing about, and it's what you'll find in his work here.

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