07 26 2010
T. REX’S CORNER
July 2010
(Rex is on vacation and his regular column will return next month)
HOW CLOSELY DO YOU CHECK VINS?
To steal a person’s identity , a thief needs to get a hold of some of your private information. But to steal a car’s identity, they only need to see a car in a parking lot and copy the Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) that is visible on the dashboard (for vehicles manufactured after 1967) and perhaps lift the license plate, replacing it with a license plate from another vehicle. With the technologies that are available today, the car identity thieves take that stolen VIN number, doctor up fake labels and a title on a computer and “clone” the original vehicle’s identification.
With the cloned VIN labels in place on the stolen vehicle and the doctored fake title, the thief may be able to register the vehicle (usually in another state) and bingo!, he has a vehicle to sell to an innocent dealer or consumer. The thief often uses the same stolen VIN on more than one vehicle, generally registering them in different states, and taking them to auctions in states far away from where the thief stole the vehicle.
In my previous “life” we worked several cases with the National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB) involving high dollar SUV’s and pickups that were stolen in Canada, and “cloned” before they were shipped to auctions located in the United States.
When you purchase a vehicle at a auction, from a wholesaler or take it in on trade, remember to check the dash VIN, door jam NHTSA sticker, and the EPA certification sticker under the hood against the VIN on the title or registration or auction invoice to see that they are ALL the same.
Check the dash VIN closely to see if there has been any VIN tampering. All American domestic assembled vehicles since 1970 should have the dash VIN held on with rosette- type rivets. Non-domestic vehicle vehicles use a variety of rivets. If you think a VIN plate or rivet attachment is not correct, check it against another vehicle of the same make/year.
Consumer protection groups are urging buyers to first check the car history database companies ( CARFAX, AUTOCHECK, etc.) for vehicle history reports to make sure the VIN is not improperly assigned to another vehicle. Most auctions run the consigned vehicle VIN’s thru a vehicle history database before offering it for sale.
But even the vehicle history report is no guarantee, but another option that you can use.
The national salvage vehicle database is finally up and running but less than 30 states are reporting their title information, and access to this federally mandated database thru third party web-based vendors has been slow to materialize.
In Idaho, when you complete the dealer section of the ITD 502 Report of Sale/Title Application you, as the selling dealer, are certifying that you have inspected the vehicle identification number. We recommend, that if you are not physically inspecting the VIN on two places (dash and door jamb) on each car that you sell, that you starting doing so ASAP!.
There are signs to look for on the altered labels and title documents. For instance, the spelling on a forged label or title may be wrong. The spacing of the text may be incorrect. Compare it with a known good title from the issuing state. Many states use a “watermark” in the title document paper. You can easily check for the watermark by holding the title up to a bright light. If you have a bar code reader, the bar code on title document or the VIN plate should be the VIN that is assigned to the vehicle. If not, you may have a problem.
NICB officials report that there may be as many as 20,000 cloned vehicles in the United States. Be careful that your vehicles are not among them !
