The Expert Podcast

Before you shell out your hard earned money for any type of vehicle or even a vehicle title make sure that you're not going to become victim of a title fraud. A couple major us law enforcement crackdowns happened about companies selling fake car titles. And you know there's a lot of people that have brought a vehicle on Craigslist or eBay or Facebook offer up even through Copart that have desperate need to get a title. Their paperwork's not complete They need to To finish it up And there's companies that prey on that they'll charge you hundreds Of dollars five six $700 to get a title because without that you can't do anything with the car. Well this company here that was in Arizona it was in the east valley of Arizona were selling fake vehicle titles and dealers licenses. Seven people were arrested they made $7 million by producing fake titles. So you know that was a lot of titles even if it's five or $600 a piece you know there's thousands tens of thousands of titles. and they did all kinds of crazy things had fake driver's licenses they help people avoid taxes and registration fees. they were discovered because of an audit And this is an important reason why if you're purchasing services to get a vehicle title make sure you are the one who's actually Only submitting the paperwork to the DMV. You can get assistance but if you just send somebody money and have them send you a title you don't know what they're using for a method or a process to get a title And you may find that the process was illegal. titles can be revoked in this case Many of titles were revoked. In this case there were 31,000 fraudulent vehicle titles were sold in 52 states using fake dealer licenses sold by the scheme. 1500 people we're able to participate in auctions They have to pay a fee a lot of these titles were revoked meaning that if you were an innocent third party you paid money to have somebody to get you a title And it turns out that It was illegal You may find that your title's revoked from the DMV and this isn't the only one. There's another article here This was a little bit of a smaller operation This one was in Connecticut These two folks here are been alleged to doing Same thing fraudulent title. it was a counterfeiting organization. They were producing counterfeit Car titles in Connecticut and New York they were also doing fake insurance cards fake money Emissions paperwork and they were arrested. The one of the parties worked for the Connecticut department of energy And they were able to forge boating certificates Because that's part of their their jurisdiction. and they Carried out this conspiracy via cell phone use the banking system they were charged with secondary forgery many counts of forgery. The most important thing was they received the initial complaint over the sale of a vehicle with a fraudulent title. So here you go This is somebody who paid money to get a fake title They got the title went to sell it and then they the person who bought it innocent party found out that their title was was counterfeit. so this is a good example of where you want to make sure that your title is valid. And if you're getting a title For a vehicle that the process is legitimate. You're not just paying somebody to sell you a title because no company can sell you a title. The titles only come from the DMV. here's another one This one was in New York She was faking car titles. Right Same thing in this case She fraudulently obtained a Pennsylvania title for a vehicle. This is a little bit different This is using False statements in order to induce the DMV to give you a title. you don't want to misrepresent anything on a title application on official government documents because if you do the title will get revoked. what happened is she used an invalid VIN number and then they saw where she filed the paperwork in person in Pennsylvania but there was a connection to Texas where there was a Texas title showing the previous owner that wasn't her. And she actually had mail forwarded to that That address You know the VIN number show the original owner as the other person in Houston And there was no record found for the title number of the vehicle. so they had the postal inspector get involved and saw that this person changed their address To get the mail so they could intercept the mail. So there's a lot of ways that this can be scammed. You know she was charged with forgery washing vehicle titles which is a very serious thing. You don't want to change anything on a title Improperly whatever the title is whether it's got a lien against it it's a salvage title You don't want to try to change that improperly. You want to go through the right channels to make sure that you're not doing anything illegal that could come back to haunt you. because Even if you're successful initially DMVs can revoke titles. If they see that there was a misrepresentation something that's incorrect on the application they can pull that title. So be very careful about how you go about getting a title make sure you're the one who sees the paperwork You know you're going to have to sign that paperwork with your signature and you're responsible for the information on it. So make sure the information is correct before it gets sent to the DMV. Because if there's something Improperly represented or fraudulent that could come back on the person who actually signed the application or who got the title for the vehicle.