A Texas plumber whose pickup truck ended up on the front lines of the Syrian civil war has filed charges against the car dealership he initially sold it to.

Mark Oberholtzer, who owns Mark-1 Plumbing in Texas City, was shocked to see his old work truck turn up in photos posted by Syrian rebels late last year.

The lawsuit contends that after the photos were widely circulated, Oberholtzer endured threats, anxiety and the loss of business because of all the national attention.

See also: Texas plumber baffled after truck ends up in the hands of Syrian rebels

His truck, with its original decal for "Mark 1 Plumbing" still fully intact and a phone number for the business visible, appeared in photos in December 2014 showing rebels firing an anti-aircraft gun from the back of the truck, somewhere in Syria.

Oberholtzer had traded in his truck to a Houston dealership, AutoNation Ford Gulf Freeway, the previous year, and that was the last he saw of it. The dealership then placed the truck up for auction.

According to the complaint, filed last week, a salesman at the dealership, Edgar Vasquez, told Oberholtzer “not to worry about the decal,” saying that peeling it off would “blemish the vehicle paint."

"At no time did Vasquez or any other agent, servant, or employee of the Defendant tell Plaintiff that Defendant would leave the decals on the truck, which would be transferred in some fashion to international jihadists conducting warfare upon innocents in Syria," reads the complaint.

Somehow, the truck made its way to Syria. The original photo of the truck was tweeted by an account associated with the Jabhat Ansar al-Din militant group based in Syria. The Twitter account has since been suspended, but the group is an assembly of known militant factions established in July 2014 that fights in the hotly contested Aleppo area.

Soon after the photo first emerged, Oberholtzer said he began receiving threatening phone calls at his business in Texas City, south of Houston. Soon after, he had to disconnect his line. The lawsuit alleges that he received over 1,000 phone calls from all over the country that were harassment or threats of violence against Oberholtzer.

News outlets and late night TV shows also picked up the photos, adding to the attention. Stephen Colbert even featured the story on the final episode of The Colbert Report, which had a record 2.5 million viewers.

He closed his business for a week and left the area, and in the complaint alleges that he has anxiety after receiving the threats.

"We had no intentions or no idea this would even happen," Oberholtzer said in an earlier interview with local television station KHOU. "Something that we would use to pull trailers and things like that, I mean, to now a truck to be used in terror, I mean that's crazy."

It is still unclear how the group got their hands on the truck. However, Oberholtzer's suit says it was auctioned in November 2013 and subsequently exported to Turkey.

Oberholtzer is seeking compensatory and punitive damages in an "amount to be determined at trial."