I had a friend that had similarly crappy incident. He was driving out of our neighborhood when his car broke down about two blocks form our house in the pouring rain just after dark. He was in a hurry to get where he was going so he just parked the car on the curb infront of some house, and then ran back to our house to take his second vehicle. An hour and a half when he went back to check on it and see if it'd start it was gone. He called the police to report it stolen and was told that it had been reported to the police as abandoned within 10 minutes of his breakdown and then towed 7 minutes later.
Apparently our city laws state that if you have a breakdown you are supposed to stay with the vehicle until you have it towed away. What we figured happened is that the house be parked in front of was a cop's or something and they reported it, and the police instead of investigating just sent a towtruck. He ended up paying a couple hundred bucks to get it back from the wrecker, even though it had been in their lot for just a couple hours. And that was after calling every tow company in town twice because the police didn't have a record for which company they had called, and the first time we called all the wreckers they denied having towed it.
Another friend told me he thought it might have been an actual attempt to legally steal the car, as he had a classic car in long term parking stolen that way. The wreckers will tow a car, then park it in their lot, after a long enough time they can claim it as abandoned and seek a salvage title.