Be Careful Out There

If you know me than you know that a week before Christmas this year I was at the local Hamilton County Tag and Title office helping my son get a new plat for his car and changing the address on my truck registration. The young gentleman behind the counter looked at me than looked at the screen and told me there was a problem and that he needed to talk to a manager. He came back with a manager and a printout telling me that I had sold my truck and surrendered my title. I told him that was news to me since I drove it to the Tag and Title office and it was parked across the street. He informed me that there was a truck Minnesota that had the same VIN as mine so the state of Tennessee surrendered it for me…We will come back to that later. So understand we are going into two holidays and state and county offices were going to be close so I didn’t thing I was going to get very far very fast on this.

So my first move was to call the Tag offices in Minnesota and inform them of the problem.They were the ones that informed me that there was a matching truck in the state of South Carolina and that is why they thought theres was good because it has a clear title from South Carolina. Nope that was fake too. So I called the Chattanooga Police Department to file a police report, not sure at the time what I thought this was going to do for me. The two officers came out and were scratching their heads as I was and had never seen or heard of this. The wrote up the report for me but I had to escalate this or I was never goign to get things cleaned up. The State of Tennessee was useless and the other states involved had more info and were more helpful in pointing me in the right direction. I have several friends that are state politicians so I was having a conversation with one of them and explained what I was going through and he made a call and within 10 minutes there was a Trooper Sgt. Rich Thomas with the Tennessee Highway Patrol calling me. He informed me that after Christmas he needed to come and inspect my truck and determine if it was the original truck or if it was stolen. Since I bought it new I thought I had a pretty good change of it being authentic. He knew without me telling him anything that I drove a GMC Sierria because of how easy they are to steal. This was news to me but there is more on that later. On Christmas Eve I got a call from a Sgt. Paul Henstein with the Minnesota State Patrol Vehicle Crimes Unit. This is when I thought we were on a roll and this would be cleaned up in no time. St. Henstein informed me that this is happening more and more. Both he and Sgt.Thomas informed me that more than likley stole a few trucks matching my description and just drove around looking for a clean truck to get the VIN off of. This is as simple as walking through parking lot or paying a valet to take a picture of the VIN plat on your dash. Sgt. Thomas showed me while he was inspecting my truck how easy it is to buy a sheet of stickers with my VIN and have them replaced and sent to another state with a fake title and the agents at no tag and title office are inspecting the truck before they give you a new title in their state and now no one will ever be the wiser. The original truck owners insurance company has made him whole, the guys in the new states all got better than expected deals on a truck, the thief and even the state got the tax money and the tag registration off of it. What a scam!

So this is called Vin cloning and it is happening all over the country. Multiple law enforcement agencies in multiple states are involed at this time but a month later I still can not drive my truck because I can not get insurance coverage without a valid title. Hold on it gets worse. So yes TH came to my house and inspected the truck and it is not stolen. So now just go get a new title and all is back to normal right? Not so fast. The state of Tennessee will not issue a new title so I can get her back on the road. All the other states have started to track down the stolen trucks and have started to scieze them. I have spoken to multiple layers of government and none of them have been any help. I have found out there there is a new system that some states participate in that I feel if where the problem started. Just because my VIN showed up on a title in Minnesota than without any due diligence the State Of Tennessee voided my title that started this whole chain.I understand that there is noway that a state call call every car buyer of seller to determine if it is a legit sale of not but at the same time they should not just take the word of a database as well.

If the numbers that they have all been telling me are accurate than someone ready this is either driving a stolen car of the VIN has been cloned as well. I would seriously consider putting your VIN into a search or go to your local tag and title have have them run it to see what comes up. The crazy stuff just keep coming out too. So as we are getting more information on this all of these stolen cars have up to date carfax reports I would recommend thinking twice before you just blindly trust that fox because it may be accident free and show a good service record but it could be stolen. No protection from them on that one. and right now there are 4 Car Fax reports with my VIN and you don’t think that is going to be hard to clean up. So far they have been about as much help as the State of Tennessee outside of one patrolman.

There is a system called VTRS that a number of states report titles into. As long these other states that report into this system show active cars in their system I am stuck. It is taking state law enforcement agencies in each state to report that to their state Department of Revenue and surrender the fake titles I am stuck and can not get a real one.

Is there anything that you can do to avoid this? Not really. You can VIN is already in so many databases from the state you live in to the oil change place to you dealership. All it takes is one of these places getting hacked and your info is out there. While most people are more concerned with the personal info or their credit card info getting stolen but it can be a muck larger headache and cost you more time to fix if they get your VIN. The other thing that you can do is cover up your VIN on your dash to make it harder to get in person.