Alison Beals
A police stakeout, nighttime raid and cops find what they’re looking for: a tiny identification plate behind the car windshield is stolen, and the car is too.
Vehicles towed, suspects in handcuffs and duped customers like Sharon Lezniak are stuck with stolen cars.
"You definitely feel like a victim," Lezniak said.
Some call it auto identity theft, and here's the real deal: state police here in Massachusetts warn you could be the next victim.
"You could potentially be buying a big mess," Trooper Weaton said.
Here's how it works:
Thieves know the vehicle identification number, VIN, is unique and different on every car. So first they copy VIN's from the Internet, car dealerships, from cars in malls and junkyards. They make perfect duplicates of the VIN plates and paperwork
Finally they steal a similar car and replace its VIN with the copied one.
Presto: it's cloned. The stolen car can no longer be identified as stolen; it has a new identity.
One man now working with police once cloned cars for a living.
"All you need is a title and registration, and you can get the car back on the road in an hour," stolen car expert Danny said.
Officers of the Massachusetts auto theft task force showed us envelopes that are essentially cloning kits, each full of fake VIN's. Police said they seized the kits from a Fall River apartment where one suspect was staying.
"So each one of these is sort of an order for a stolen car?" Hank Phillippi Ryan asked.
"Correct," Trooper Wheaton said.
"And these kits could mean the cloning is getting closer?" Ryan asked. "So people in Massachusetts could be victims?"
"They could potentially be buying, unknowingly buying, a stolen car," Trooper Wheaton said.
When Shawna Martins mechanic found her car was actually a stolen automobile, she called the police.
"I was making loan payments on a car I didn't even have," Lezniak said.
Problem is that the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles, like those in most states, isn't equipped to share interstate info on duplicate VIN's, and insurance experts showed us how easy it is to counterfeit a title.
"How many of these do you think are out there?" Ryan asked
"Oh I don't know, hundreds? Tens of thousands," Richard Murphy of the National Insurance Crime Bureau said.
To protect yourself at car buying time, police say make sure all the VIN's on the car and the title are exact matches, and do a car history to check for anything suspicious.
Experts estimate 50,000 cloned cars are on the road right now, and they fear this new numbers game may make you the loser.
"It is high profit and very, very low risk and the ability or the chance of getting caught is really slim to none," Linda Lewis Pickett of the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators (AAMVA) said.
Police warn that online car purchases can be especially risky because you can't actually see the numbers before you buy.
For more information, check out the links below:
National Insurance Crime Bureau
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