The Expert Podcast

Even official DMV employees can be part of vehicle title frauds. Here's an article where a DMV employee was actually forging vehicle titles. In this case, it was for their own benefit. They had a colleague along with himself who was trying to get a title for a 2020 Land Rover, and this employee was forging titles using their access to the motor vehicle records in order to get a title for a vehicle that didn't belong to them.

According to the case, allegedly this employee—this is in Illinois—was arrested after forging a title for a stolen vehicle. They used the computer database to run a VIN check and used a fake VIN number on a title application to get a stolen vehicle title.

Now, this was a very isolated event. However, it does also reflect some caution you need to take into account when you're looking to get a title for a vehicle. Anytime you're getting a title through some non-standard method—like if you're using an alternative, or a court order title, or bonded title—you want to make sure that whoever is doing the process for you is using completely legitimate means.

There's a lot of ways to get a title, and some of them are legitimate, some aren't. When a method that's used is improper, you may find yourself in a position where that title gets revoked. We see this all the time—we get four or five inquiries a day from people who have purchased a vehicle and then come to find out that the title they have has been revoked because, at some point, the application for the title—whether they did it or somebody else—was done improperly.

That title is no longer valid. Just because you have a title doesn't mean that the story's over. If that title turns out to be obtained in an improper manner, it can be revoked at a later date. So making sure that the method of getting a title is appropriate for your vehicle, appropriate for your scenario, is important so that you can have security in that title and you don't have to worry about losing it later.