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Trainer/Consultant Ron Wedekind (606) 473-2057 Email: titlefraud@aol.com |
TITLE FRAUD - Telltale Signs of Title Fraud"Nothing happens to a title by accident." Whether it's a smeared stamp or a convenient tear, damage done to a used vehicle's title is rarely caused by chance, said Lt. Ron Wedekind, of the Florida Highway Patrol and the Federal Odometer Fraud Task Force, the featured speaker in a recent seminar on title fraud. "These are valuable documents," he said during the dealer seminar, held on Oct. 9. "You don't mess with them. If you see something unusual, you need to take a closer look." Wedekind led dealers and auto auctions through a detailed course on ways to spot fraud, speaking via telephone while running an Internet-based slide show. Fraud is more common today because rapidly advancing color copiers and scanners make it easier to create false titles, he said. Social and economic pressures have also made counterfeiting and forgery more common and tougher to stop. But the telltale signs are always there, he said. Dealers just need to know how to spot them. "You can't have car crimes without documents to cover them up," Wedekind said. "This is a serious problem." Odometer fraud is the most common crime, and some shady dealers go to great lengths to cover their tracks, he added. A common warning sign is a lease or luxury vehicle with unusually low mileage (as few as 12,000 miles per year). Many sellers will etch off the first number in a vehicle's mileage count, and others will tell half-truths by blatantly marking out one of the numbers and noting on the title that there is an odometer discrepancy. Most other fraud cases occur when owners try to wash a salvage or flood brand from a vehicle's history. Wedekind said title clerks should look for changes in title destination or other changes that boost a vehicle's value more than $2,500. Other warning signs include unusually high or low prices and documents that "just don't seem right," he said. "If you know where to look, your eyes will go right to it," he said, adding that dealers should look closely for more signs if even one fraud indicator is visible. Many sellers trying to pawn cars with fraudulent titles by telling long, sad stories to explain their unusually low prices. "A deal that seems too good to be true probably is," Wedekind said. They want to deflect attention from their false titles, which might provide subtle clues to thorough buyers. Wedekind urged title clerks and dealers to carefully look for those clues. Even using a magnifying glass or holding a title up to a light can reveal signs of alteration not usually visible in a close inspection. Many titles use intricately designed borders printed with high-resolution machinery. If those borders feel waxy, the title is probably fake, he said. Legitimate titles also come with embedded threads that can be seen with a black light. Be sure to check for changes in font, spelling, punctuation, character alignment and placement, he said. Wedekind said he once saw a fraudulent title with the vehicle's brand name misspelled - and it passed through the state's motor vehicle department without incident. Common alteration methods include erasure, whiteout and shaving, he said. Erasures show up as faded areas in a title's background pattern and gradual fades in shadowed boxes. They look thin when a title is held up to the light, he said. "Erasures often result in broken lines below sections of the title where a blank must be filled in," he said. "Also look for lighted or faded areas in the background." Whiteouts are usually done by cutting and pasting and writing over the original text. Some crafty sellers use chemicals to fade ink and make it easier to change letters and numbers. Some DMVs have fought back by making their titles sensitive to those chemicals, revealing hidden "void" tags when titles are dipped, he said. With false titles, folds, wrinkles, holes and smudges always seem to cover critical data like mileage, Wedekind said. He provided several examples in his presentation, including a title torn just enough to slash a couple digits off the mileage and another with holes punched into it to conceal a salvage brand. Some shave ink off a title with a razor blade and use art pencils to recreate background patters, he said. Title fraud frequently occurs on titles from far-away states. Many sellers don't want title clerks to be extremely familiar with the type of titles they fake, Wedekind said. "The crooks don't have any qualms about going across state lines," he said. Dealers who suspect a title might be false should contact local authorities or the state attorney general's office to learn what to do, he said. A uniform, national auto title with an abundance of security features would be an ideal tool to fight fraud, but such bills have always faltered in Congress, Wedekind said. Many states also value their autonomy and prefer their own systems. He said there were no bills pending in Congress to create national titles.
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