The Expert Podcast

So you've heard us talk before about motor vehicle records and investigating vehicle title records. Here's the thing: vehicle records, even though they're not public information or open-source information, have sources that can be discovered—such as who the owner is and who the lien holder is. In fact, there is now a cottage industry of certain investigators hunting for misregistered vehicles.

What does that mean? Well, certain municipalities, government towns, cities, counties, and even states know that some people will register their vehicles in another state to try to save taxes. For example, if you live in New York and taxes are high, you might register at your cousin's house in Florida to save taxes. The problem is, that’s costing the state money, so what they do is hire investigators to look for vehicles that are parked regularly with out-of-state plates. Even if they have in-state plates but are from a different city, they might be trying to save on city or county taxes.

What they do is not just look manually at this; they have an algorithm where they use cameras that monitor license plates over and over. If they see that a license plate is parked in the same driveway, parking lot, shopping mall, or commercial property, and they can see that the plate is registered in another city or county, they know something might be off. Most municipalities or government agencies have a grace period, so if you move, you can switch over your registration within 30 days. But after 30 days, if you're extending your stay without paying your taxes, that might result in a penalty.

How does this affect the investigative industry? Well, if you are a potential client, be aware that your license plate being visible is telling the world more about you than you know. Your name, address, lien holder (if you have one), and all kinds of other information about that vehicle can be determined from the license plate—even the history of that vehicle, who owned it, and when it was purchased.

So if you're doing something you don't want discovered or if you want to uncover something about someone else, be aware that license plates can reveal a lot. It can even be automated. There's a process called ALPR—Automated License Plate Reader. It reads license plates and does OCR (Optical Character Recognition) on the plate, translating it into ownership information. License plates and vehicle activity can be a big benefit to certain investigations, helping to discover activity, movements, and to reveal whether or not a statement being made by a person about their whereabouts is actually true.