By Matthew Schwartz
TAMPA -- You probably know all about identity theft. But the identity of your car can also be stolen. It's called "car cloning," and it's happening in the Tampa Bay area. The ABC Action News Investigators have discovered that several local bay area law enforcement agencies are now conducting a large investigation into car cloning.
Car cloning usually works this way: Thieves steal a car, most often a luxury model or high-end SUV. Then they copy the vehicle identification numbers, or VINS, from a similiar vehicle that they find anywhere on the street. The numbers are in plain view in every car's windshield. They then make a phony VIN plate and phony title, and sell the vehicle, typically for a profit of about 30-thousand dollars.
Ron Poindexter, Director of Operations in the Tampa office of the National Insurance Crime Bureau, says "It's a sophisticated crime. It's taken street crime to that of a white collar crime."
Poindexter also says many of the thieves are operating as part of an organized ring. In other states, they've had help from insiders. In Arizona, a worker for the motor vehicles agency was charged with selling phony titles to cloning thieves.
ABC Action News Investigative Reporter Matthew Schwartz interviewed a Pasco County resident who says his 2007 Hummer H-2 was recently seized by police, when they showed up at his home and told him the SUV had been stolen in New York. The Pasco County man says he had no idea the H2 was stolen, he claimed the VIN plate looked perfect. He did not want to be identified because, he says, he's embarrassed about what happened.
You could buy a cloned vehicle and not know it. Ron Poindexter says before buying a car, you should check the VIN with Carfax and the National Insurance Crime Bureau. Also, if the asking price of a car is much lower than its value, that should be a red flag that it could be stolen.
Law enforcement organizations, state motor vehicle administrators and advocacy groups all say that fully implementing the National Motor Vehicle System, or NMVTIS, would combat VIN cloning and title fraud by allowing the public access to constantly updated vehicle histories from every state and Canada.
So far, 30 states, including Florida, are participating in the national system. But the system is limited because a majority of participants don't have their systems completely online or submit reports periodically. An estimated $11 million, which the federal government would give to states, is needed to complete the system.
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