[RahulNagaraj]

A car dealership owner in the USA has been caught and jailed for 5 years for odometer tampering. The owner is also said to have been fined close to US$ 4 million in restitution.



According to reports, the owner had a long-running scheme where he would purchase cars, tamper with its odometer and sell them to unsuspecting customers for a profit. The car dealership owner, along with his brother, is said to have tampered with odometers of approximately 690 vehicles they sold between 2006 and 2011. Over the years, the owner is said to have rolled back the odometer reading by around 69,000 miles on an average.

The reports go on to suggest that the owner and his brother would purchase cars from different states (Florida, Illinois, Maryland & others) using fake names and fake dealer names. They would then change the odometer readings and resell the same cars, now with a lower mileage, in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.



The tampering wasn't just limited to analogue odometers, but on digital ones as well. The car dealership owner is said to have pleaded guilty back in August last year and was sentenced earlier this week after multiple delays.

Source: Justice.gov

Link to Team-BHP news

[Dhillon]

Sometimes I feel that the USA has apt punishments for crimes. The fine is also steep and I am sure a lot of dealers will be wary to tamper the odometers.

[Mango]

Odometer tampering is a common sight in India, Looking for used cars is more of a challenge than an experience as I feel that most dealers are there to take advantage of you. Every car I saw last year looked like it was driven more than a lakh kilometers because I couldn't possibly justify the condition of the car with the Odometer readings and even at places like TrueValue who are manufacturer backed. But India definitely has bigger problems to deal with rather than protecting their consumers and this practice may go on for another few years.

[Indian2003]

Originally Posted by RahulNagaraj

A car dealership owner in the USA has been caught and jailed for 5 years for odometer tampering. The owner is also said to have been fined close to US$ 4 million in restitution.

In the US which is supposed to be leading the world in everything has got an obsolete system for registration for driving licences and cars. It is possible to steal a car in one state and give it a new ID in another.

You can get a driving licence with a social security number. This is what I see in crime documentaries.

All mileage is kept on file by the government. Anybody can log in and check the mileage of any car on the road. The mileage at the last inspection is always recorded.

Here is a record of the mileage in my car.

[jithin23]

Well that's a big punishment for the erring dealer. Here in India, even the reputed used car dealers and some individuals (I believe that almost all Bhpians have integrity and wouldn't resort to such antics) tamper the odometer. Literally it's very challenging to find a clean vehicle be it a two wheeler or a 4-wheeler.

However, India has a long way to go in terms of protecting consumers and regulating the used car market, Let alone preventing odometer tampering. Plus cost of living and disparity in income or payscales too makes such people use such tricks. Everything is interlinked.

[rahulskumar]

There should be strict punishment even for dealers who drive and allow new vehicles for test drives with the odometer cable disconnected. These fraudsters easily cover 500-600 kms or may be more before handing it over to us as a brand new vehicle

[greenhorn]

It's a small fish that got caught. If you're a manufacturer nothing happens https://www.topspeed.com/cars/car-ne...-ar180105.html

[HornNotOkPlease]

I was in the market for used cars few years back and i was amazed how easy this odo rollback process was and almost all cars that i had inspected of age less than 5 years had odo in the 30K range!! These user car online portals happily give certified tags on them.

[anjan_c2007]

Tampering for both analog and digital speedometers is an easy job for crooks trained to do so. You Tube has quite many such videos. A link here to detect tampering :-

https://youtu.be/cjNSQSulPyk

Many of our Indian used car and bike dealers engage in such nefarious activities, that the gullible customers get fooled with. It's an age old practice and perhaps a fundamental right, "onerous duty" and tradition for the fraudster used car dealer and even the digital meters have not deterred them.

However, in a no-nonsense, vigilant and very demanding market like the US its amusing to read this news of the person who was safely into this activity and undetected since 15 years. And in the system we all know as much, much advanced and more foolproof, the crook gets away with totally obliterating used car identities and registrations, getting them done up with his own devised tricks and notorious methods to cheat buyers.

A happy ending is that the fraudster, cheat and outlaw is now behind the bars.

[GTO]

The perfect punishment for what is an indirect financial fraud. Well done .

Guys, to protect yourself from becoming a victim, please only buy used cars with a fully documented service & maintenance history. Match the running year on year and you should have a true picture. In most cases, an expert driver will also be able to tell a 30000 km car from a 60000 km one.

[Kosfactor]

It is rare to see a non tampered vehicle at the used car dealership, the reason is people`s comfort level at considering ~40K run vehicles as almost new and ~70K run vehicles as the most mileage they are going to pay a fair price for it - afterwards its all downhill. When selling a vehicle as well the owner expects maximum value out of it and is perfectly okay with this tampering process.

It is very easy to service the car on alternate intervals at the dealership after clocking the meter to maintain service record. Not even True value can figure this out \ wants to dig into it and easily sells through their dealer at a huge premium.

In my opinion the seller (owners) as well the as the middle man dealer is equally responsible for the tampering - our jails will be full if we put them all behind bars.

[Lobogris]

Originally Posted by Indian2003

In the US which is supposed to be leading the world in everything has got an obsolete system for registration for driving licences and cars. It is possible to steal a car in one state and give it a new ID in another.

You can get a driving licence with a social security number. This is what I see in crime documentaries.]

It is not that easy. Every vehicle has a title document and if you want to move it to another state in the US, you have to take the original title and then they issue you a new one and keep the existing title. All state motor vehicle departments are interconnected for the past few decades. It would have been easier till about 1995 or so. Till around the year 2000, you could ignore traffic citations issued in other states but after that they started showing up in your home state as well as your insurance records as all states got interlinked. To get a driving license, you need to present a birth certificate or passport in addition to the social security number. Of course there can be some corruption or usage of false documents but is very rare and is severely punished.

Originally Posted by anjan_c2007

However, in a no-nonsense, vigilant and very demanding market like the US its amusing to read this news of the person who was safely into this activity and undetected since 15 years.

It was actually quite prevalent in the US as well until about 20 years ago. It was almost assumed that used cars would have meter tampering until strict laws were passed against it. Even now it isn’t unheard of. Only difference is that the law enforcement is much more vigilant and the legal system is faster. Thus people can be punished in a few months to a year rather than the case dragging for decades and then getting lost.

Originally Posted by Kosfactor

It is rare to see a non tampered vehicle at the used car dealership, the reason is people`s comfort level at considering ~40K run vehicles as almost new and ~70K run vehicles as the most mileage they are going to pay a fair price for it - afterwards its all downhill. When selling a vehicle as well the owner expects maximum value out of it and is perfectly okay with this tampering process.

Fully agree with you. Any vehicle more than 3 to 5 years old is bound to be driven close to or over 100k. People just get afraid at seeing 80k on the odo even when the car is in good shape but happily buy it if it shows say 36k. That was the justification used by used car dealers in the US as well.

[satchit_bhp]

I know a lot of used car dealers personally and some of them are now friends who runs car mela's (Fair),almost all the dealers are into this wrong practise of tampering with the odometer.
In fact, these digital odometers are very easy to tamper and change the reading than the analogue ones, the analogues required some work.
Most of the customers are being cheated by used car dealers, if they have no knowledge of buying a used car.

[AirbusCapt]

The root cause for odometer tampering is the wrong perception of thr buying public. Due to poorly built cars like thr Fiat and the Ambassador, we have a notion that cars with over 50000 kms on the odometer are junk. That may well be true in 1970, but no longer holds good in 2021.
We as the buying public is guilty of trying to browbeat the seller to reduce the price under the guise of monitoring the odometer reading. What we fail to realise is that a well cared for and a properly used car will atleast do between 15000/20000 kms per year. So a 5 year old car has to have a milage of atleast 75000 to 100000+ kms of geniune usage in that period. Infact we must shy away from cars which run only 35k kms in 5 years, which tells me that either the odo has been tampered or the car has sat in the garage for long periods of time leading to more wear and tear.

[sumeethaldankar]

A good video on odo tampering in the US market.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAiduOoZKB4