The Expert Podcast

Here's another side effect of the crazy auto market with prices skyrocketing on used cars. One of the ways that fraudsters, scammers, and criminals are taking advantage of that is by buying high-mileage cars for cheap and altering the odometer. This allows them to sell the car at a higher price. With consumers having a tough time finding vehicles that are affordable with low miles, the hackers are buying vehicles with high miles using a very cheap odometer-correcting tool that costs $300. You hook it up to the computer of the car, and you can roll back the vehicle mileage.

In one case, an investigator showed an example where he rolled it back from 150,000 miles to 50,000 miles. Now, you have a vehicle that, instead of being worth $10,000, is worth $2,000 or $3,000. You roll the miles back and sell it for $6,000 or $7,000, and the person thinks they're getting a deal. But, in reality, they're just buying a car with a lot of problems. The high value of used cars skyrocketing has created this problem, and the digital odometers make it even worse.

It used to be that the odometers were actually wheels inside the dashboard that turned the numbers. Now, it's all digital, so you can reprogram it and correct the mileage with a computer. The problem comes in when you go to register that car title. The prior mileage has been recorded in the title history, and so if there's a conflict or a dispute, then there's going to be what's called TMU (True Mileage Unknown). You, as a buyer or an owner, could have a car with no value because a TMU car could have any miles on it.

Don't fall for just taking the word of the seller or relying on what's shown on the car. Do a title history check to make sure that the vehicle has the mileage it’s supposed to, so you don't get stuck with a car that you think is a good low-mileage car with no maintenance problems but has actually been run through the ringer and has two or three hundred thousand miles on it.