Mate Rimac leaves the keys in his cars.
He has said so online, more than once, and for years it never mattered.
Then on 28 October, a man walked onto a company site in Zagreb, found the keys sitting in Rimac’s £2m Bugatti Chiron and drove away in it.
CCTV shows man casually climbing into £2m Bugatti Chiron
Security cameras caught the moment. No balaclava, no smashed window.
Just a man getting into a hypercar with the ease of someone borrowing a mate’s Fiesta.
Rimac, the 38-year-old Bugatti chief executive, went after him in his Porsche 911.
The Chiron’s built-in tracker did the rest, and Austrian police eventually recovered the car.
Officers believe the driver was taking it to neighbouring Slovenia, as reported by Creatorzine.
They arrested a Croatian man in his 30s.
Bugatti boss comes face to face with the suspect
Rimac, a Croatian citizen born in Bosnia, says he met the man at an Austrian police station.
The suspect told him he had come to the site looking for work, spotted the keys in the Chiron and decided to take it.
Rimac says he won’t press charges. He did warn the man that a car worth this much means prosecutors may pursue the case anyway.
Then he offered to drive him home to his family.
According to Rimac, police refused.
The Chiron came back with minor damage and needs repairs.
Why Rimac kept leaving the keys in his supercars
Rimac posted about the ordeal online and admitted he had previously revealed that he leaves keys in the cars so staff can move them around the site.
“The car was stolen yesterday, obviously; I got it back,” he said.
“We are in Croatia, which is super super safe, and this will sound very strange – especially for people living in the US or somewhere else.
“I’m so proud of Croatia being so safe that I’m very relaxed, meaning I also always leave my keys inside my cars, including Chiron and Nevera.
“I did that for years, and nothing ever happened, of course, until something did happen now, so I will not do that anymore and don’t try your luck.”
Why It Matters
Rimac runs a hypercar company, but online he behaves much like a creator.
He shares his garage, his habits and his routines with an audience that hangs on all of it.
Nobody has suggested the suspect ever saw his post about the keys. That hardly helps.
Every creator who has filmed a room tour, tagged a location in real time or mentioned when the house sits empty has made some version of the same bet.
Most of them don’t have a tracker fitted to the thing they’ve just told the internet about.
Personal security has become a standard conversation among creators, as audiences grow large enough to include people with intentions other than watching.
Rimac’s keys are coming out of the ignition.
Whether the man who drove off in his Chiron faces court is no longer his decision to make.
