Too Good To Be True: Beware of Vehicle Cloning

Craigslist, social media, Bring a Trailer… we have so many more vehicle purchasing options than we used to!  All these choices may lead you to your dream car, truck, or bike, but they also might lead you to a cloned vehicle if you aren’t careful.  Read on for shocking and true stories of this surprisingly simple scam tactic and for ways to avoid it when you are looking for your next amazing ride.

Vehicle Cloning: A Major Crime Few People Have Heard Of

“F B I (3769245201)” by Shinsuke Ikegame is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Car cloning means taking the identity from a legitimately-owned car and using it on a stolen car.  It’s a serious crime, and both federal and local law enforcement agents have cracked big car cloning cases all over the country.  Louisville, KY police recently cracked a car cloning ring that led to the seizure of 30 vehicles, 3 car haulers, a travel trailer, and a boat.  The internet is full of stories from all over the country of legal vehicle owners who find out their cars, trucks, or motorcycles have been cloned, and of complex criminal schemes that clone large numbers of vehicles.  FBI Operation Dual Identity netted 17 criminals, more than 1000 cloned cars, and losses of more than $25 million to drivers, insurers, and other victims.

Cloned vehicles tend to be luxury models with lots of add-ons and options, though virtually any kind of vehicle can be susceptible to this scam. So, how does it work?

VIN Plates always look something like this.

“Typenschild 425.820” by Johannes Maximilian is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 - image has been cropped

It all starts with the VIN

When a vehicle is cloned, a bad actor takes a stolen car, truck, or motorcycle and removes the VIN plates, small metal tags that display the unique 17 digit code that identifies the vehicle.  The bad actor then replaces the plates with new plates which contain the VIN of a legally-owned vehicle of the same make and model.  Voila!  Anyone who examines the identifying numbers on this stolen vehicle will now find information that leads to a perfectly legal vehicle… that belongs to some unsuspecting person somewhere.  We use so many computer databases in daily life that VIN numbers for legally-owned vehicles are probably way easier to obtain than we wish they were.  For example, it only took me about 2 minutes of Googling phrases like “VIN list” to find PDF docs online that contained thousands of VINs for late model Hondas that may be sitting out there in someone’s driveway as you read this.  Getting a VIN can be as simple as trawling car dealerships until you find the make and model you want and then jotting down the VIN while you check out the vehicle. Too easy!

Theft with a side of document forgery

Example of a legit Oregon title. Vehicle cloning only works if bad actors forge a title for the cloned vehicle.

4014866449 by thekirbster is licensed under CC BY 2.0 - image has been cropped

Now that the bad actor has a stolen vehicle with VIN plates that make the vehicle look legitimate, the only thing missing is a title that lists the thief as a legal owner and that contains the stolen VIN.  The thief creates a forged title, a practice that is unfortunately far too common in the US.  (Click here for previous coverage about title fraud on this blog; as many as 1 in 325 US car titles may be forged!)

Now the illegal trail is fully covered.  A stolen vehicle now has VIN plates that identify it as a different vehicle, and a title document to back up the lie.  Cloning has occurred!  Rest assured, though, this scam is not undetectable. As we will see in a moment, there are many ways you can protect yourself.

Not the fun kind of cloning either!

SDCC 2012 - Clone Troopers by Pat Loika is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Why clone a vehicle?

The reasons for cloning a car, truck, or motorcycle all have to do with making a profit.  Stolen cars are hard to sell to a legitimate buyer because most buyers won’t buy a car without a title.  Cloning a vehicle allows a seemingly legitimate sale to take place with no trace of the theft of the vehicle.  Cloning also allows a bad actor to hide bad things that have happened in the history of a vehicle even if that vehicle wasn’t stolen.  Maybe a truck was badly damaged in a flood and now has a salvage title; vehicles are given salvage titles when, in their current condition, they have little or no financial value.  Unfortunately for a potential buyer, flood damage can also be hidden pretty cheaply too.  If the engine of a truck was damaged in a flood, all it takes is some paint and polish to make the exterior of the truck look like it was never in a flood.  The truck’s VIN, on the other hand, contains information about the salvage title… until a bad actor clones the truck, switches its VIN for a similar truck that belongs to someone else, and forges a non-salvage title.  Now the flood damage is washed away (sorry - couldn’t resist the obvious pun!) and the truck can be sold at a much higher price.

Even if a vehicle isn’t stolen, it still might be cloned to hide prior flood damage.

New Orleans May 2018 Flooding - Submerged Truck by Bart Everson is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Cars, trucks, and motorcycles are valuable goods, and sometimes you can use this value to secure a loan; this is called an auto equity loan.  Unfortunately, this gives bad actors another reason to clone a vehicle: they can take out a loan against the value of the vehicle they’ve cloned.  If the vehicle is a pricey model, then that loan could be quite large, like upwards of $30,000.  The cloned car, truck, or motorcycle shares a VIN with a vehicle sitting somewhere in a driveway or dealer’s lot, and so the loan is connected to both vehicles, the cloned one and the one that belongs to some unsuspecting person.  This Arizona family discovered fraud like this the hard way when they went to sell their truck to pay off medical expenses and discovered that a loan had been taken out against it, or in reality against a cloned truck that shared their truck’s VIN.  They made this unfortunate discovery when the buyer and seller of the truck went to the DMV together to transfer the title - as if going to the DMV wasn’t painful enough already!

Helping people avoid the DMV is kind of our thing at Dirt Legal.  We specialize in doing stuff like titling and registering vehicles in affordable ways that totally take the work off your hands.  You send us some basic info and documents, and we do the rest.  The paperwork you need arrives in your hands, and you hit the road.  Check out what we can offer or contact us to learn more!

Bad actors get tickets on cloned vehicles, and legit owners get the bill!

Parking ticket - Washington DC - 2011-08-25 by Tim1965 is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0

What if you’re the victim of car cloning?

Maybe you got a piece of mail that you didn’t understand related to your car, truck, or motorcycle.  Maybe it was an unpaid parking ticket from a place you’ve never visited, or an E-Z Pass violation notice from a toll you’ve never driven through.  Maybe at the time you ignored the piece of mail, thinking “this must have been a mistake.”  It may well have been a mistake, or we’re sorry to tell you that someone may have stolen the VIN from the vehicle that is sitting in your driveway.

That’s why we say: don’t ignore the situation!  Contact local law enforcement right away.  You need to start documenting the fact that any negative actions like blown tolls don’t have anything to do with you.  Luckily in this era where our connected devices often keep record of where we go and what we do, this isn’t as hard as it used to be.  If it comes down to it, you might be able to prove that you were in New Mexico ordering food from a delivery app while the cloned car that shares your VIN was getting a ticket in Tennessee.

Make a call to your local police department and ask to file a report.  Use phrases like “car cloning” and “VIN cloning” and make sure you end up with a record of your report / call.  Contact your state’s department of transportation as well.  Unfortunately, vehicle cloning is such a widespread and problematic crime that some states have dedicated contact pages for the topic of car cloning, like this page from the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles.

By the way, the previously linked page also links to a VIN check service, but that service only has access to information in the state of Florida’s database. Dirt Legal’s VIN check is a cheap and more comprehensive way to find out important information connected to your car, truck, or motorcycle’s VIN.

Used Cars For Sale - Car Dealership by Bassetts Honda is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

How to guard against cloning?

Follow these simple guidelines during your next vehicle purchase to protect yourself against buying a car, truck, or motorcycle with a cloned VIN:

Check the VIN plates

Remember that if a vehicle has been the victim of cloning, then someone removed its original VIN plates and replaced them with plates containing a VIN belonging to another vehicle.  VIN plates can usually be found on the dashboard near the window on the driver’s side, on the door jamb on the driver’s side, and on the firewall of the engine.  These plates are often metal and screwed in but can also be stickers in some cases.  A little internet searching can tell you exactly where to find the VIN plates on specific makes and models.  If the VIN plates look tampered with or like they’ve been touched/altered in any way, or if the numbers on all of them don’t match each other, then you should be concerned.  There is no good reason to mess with a VIN plate!

Eye test of all the documents

Ask lots of questions during the negotiation for any car, truck, or motorcycle that you are thinking of buying.  Don’t part with your money unless you see the vehicle’s current registration documents and title.  Make sure all the details match, including the vehicle’s color and trim level if listed.  Do internet searches for the state the vehicle is coming from and see what their registration and title documents are supposed to look like, if you don’t already know.  Consider walking away if anything looks strange.  Titles, for example, are state-issued documents that come on a specific kind of paper and often have unique watermarks.  If any of these things are missing, you should be concerned.  Remember how common cloning is!  If you’ve looked at lots of potential vehicles for purchase, chances are that you’ve seen at least one vehicle with a cloned VIN. Shocking but true!

Run a VIN check

To combat fraud and scams like vehicle cloning, the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators (a nongovernmental nonprofit agency) maintains the National Motor Vehicle Title Information System or NMVTIS.  The NMVTIS contains valuable information about vehicle history, and Dirt Legal’s VIN check service is a cheap and easy way to get access to the important information in this nation-wide database. Don’t shop for a vehicle without our help checking the VIN!

Too good a deal?

If you are looking to buy a car, truck, or motorcycle, don’t fall for a deal that is too good to be true!  Bad actors often price a cloned vehicle high enough so that they can make a profit but low enough that buyers will look past warning signs like suspicious errors in the title or a VIN plate that shows signs of tampering.  Use a service like Kelley Blue Book’s price checker to find out the approximate cost of a certain make, model, and year.  If the price of the vehicle you are looking at is way lower, then walk away!  Your skeptical and careful attitude is your best defense against buying a cloned vehicle or getting into other sorts of scams like the ones we’ve written articles on below.

Be a careful buyer and enjoy a stress-free purchase of that next vehicle!

Remote central locking by James086 is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

Summing Up

By now, hopefully you understand:

• How vehicle cloning is a widespread and major crime

• The role of a stolen VIN and forged documents in vehicle cloning

• Why bad actors clone vehicles

• What to do if your vehicle has been cloned

• How to be sure you don’t buy a cloned vehicle

We’re confident that with this information, your good judgment and a little help from services like our VIN check service, you will steer clear of cloned cars, trucks, and motorcycles.  If you ever need help with any of the hassles of titling and registering a vehicle, we’re just a message away.  Whatever happens, you won’t be seeing us at the DMV!