Selling Titles

[Zimm63]

Diggger brings a whole new line into this conversation.

 

While I have seen and read about re numbered cars over the years, I do not recall hearing about/reading about instances of outright forged title documents.  It occurs to me that particular scam would blow up quickly.

 

Can you cite any credible sources for your assertion?

 

 

[Xander Wildeisen]

I think when we look at the federal reserve. One can come to the conclusion that what was stated above is possible.

[Digger914]

4 hours ago, Zimm63 said:

Diggger brings a whole new line into this conversation.

 

While I have seen and read about re numbered cars over the years, I do not recall hearing about/reading about instances of outright forged title documents.  It occurs to me that particular scam would blow up quickly.

 

Can you cite any credible sources for your assertion?

 

 

Cars are titled real property and it takes more than a vin number to register a title. Blacks Law defines forgery as the act of fraudulently making a false document or altering a real one--------- In a nutshell, auto title forgery is the unauthorized fraudulently filling in the blanks of a title certificate, the unauthorized adding an assignment and endorsement to a title certificate, or altering the information contained on the title certificate.  In re numbering stolen vehicles, title forgery doesn't get allot of press and is usually nothing more than a footnote in the bigger charges of conspiracy, fraud and theft.

 

One of my little semi retirement gigs is expert witness and eventually the results of my document examinations end up as public record in somebody's court case. Not wanting to help the competition, I refer all to the FBI and the criminal investigation bureaus of all 50 states as credible resources to my non specific assertions.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

[stakeside]

In Southern Ca titles are real collector items.

 

[Xander Wildeisen]

They want more for that title, then I have paid for some Hudson's. And they came with a title.

[Joe in Canada]

2 hours ago, Xander Wildeisen said:

They want more for that title, then I have paid for some Hudson's. And they came with a title.

So what does the second line of that title say after penalty.

[Xander Wildeisen]

10 minutes ago, Joe in Canada said:

So what does the second line of that title say after penalty.

can not read it. You tell me.

[Digger914]

35 minutes ago, Joe in Canada said:

So what does the second line of that title say after penalty.

After penalty---

for alteration or forgery of this certificate---and it should go on to read--- punishable by up to five years in jail or prison and fines up to $10,000.

But who reads the small print.

[lump]

I always tell folks who ask my opinion about such matters that, IF you are not attempting to defraud anyone, or to set up a situation which will lead to someone else getting defrauded down the line...then any punishment would be unlikely. But if you buy a title and then change serial numbers on a vehicle to match that title...and then eventually happens (IE: that VIN number kicks back at a title agency because of a stolen car or such)...you might find yourself with a very big problem. 

 

MANY people, when they find a cool old car in a barn and buy it with a notarized bill of sale (from a legitimate owner), will "sell" their car through the mail to someone in one of those states which do not require a "title" for cars older than a certain age. Then the "buyer" takes the notarized bill of sale into his title agency, and gets a brand new title issued in HIS name. Now he legally owns "your" vehicle. Next, he visits a notary and signs that title out of his name, as the "seller." Then the title is mailed back to you. Now you take that notarized title to your own local notary, sign your name to it as the "buyer," and take it to your state's title bureau. They may require an inspection, but soon you will have a new title for that car issued in your name. MUCH safer than altering VIN's, which is highly illegal. On the other hand, should it turn out that the car you bought from the barn was listed as stolen years ago....you have a problem, Houston. 

[Matt Harwood]

On 10/8/2016 at 4:51 AM, Digger914 said:

Granted that some state title laws encourage title fraud and there are a number of people looking to title their barn find beauty that will go the easy and sometimes only route to title and purchase the vin plate and title from someone else’s stripped to nothing parts car.  But the boys and girls in the business of stealing big money cars for resale don’t shop car shows and ebay for used titles, they get fresh clean blanks from someone at the state, or the printer that makes them for the state.

Some old car titles are valuable for historical or social reasons. They are collectible and have differing values for different people, for reasons that sometimes confuse my sense of understanding. The boys and girls in the business of stealing big money classics have different title needs than the new car crooks and they shop for old titles.  In this dollar range they usually have an old school forger and all they need is the 20 year old piece of paper that was a title, to make a title that can be transferred.

 

 

There's just no way this kind of scam can work. Simply having a title with the right numbers on it doesn't mean it exists or is official. The numbers are assigned by and maintained by the county-level clerk of courts in most states, so simply showing up with a piece of paper that has the right numbers on it and claiming you own a particular car just isn't going to fly. Not ever.

 

About seven months ago, a new computer system (organized and funded in part by the Department of Homeland Security) started linking all the databases in all 50 states, which is causing a lot of problems for hobbyists. For instance, in the past three months, I've purchased two separate old cars with good Ohio titles. Those titles have been transferred twice in the case of one car and three times in the case of the other, in the past 40-50 years--that is, they transferred ownership legally through the Ohio Clerk of Courts and BMV. When I went to title them in my name after this new system was in place, I was dismayed to discover that one car was a "junked" title from Wisconsin (meaning the car had been totaled at some point) and the other was "surrendered" in Arkansas and the VIN was no longer valid and the car had been destroyed. Despite the fact that Ohio had issued new, perfectly valid titles to new owners over the past few decades, I was forced to take a salvage title on one and lost the title to the other until I can clear the situation up. Not good. I own a very expensive car which I can neither title, license, nor sell at this point, though no fault of my own.

 

The car with the "salvage" title sold to a guy who didn't care and it obviously didn't matter--it was a Full Classic in good condition, clearly not totaled and not a worry like a modern car would be. But I was very lucky to find a new owner willing to accept it--salvage titles typically mean your car is worth $0.40-0.50 on the dollar. The other car is still pending--we've requested the records from Arkansas, but they pre-date computers so they're going to have to go find the papers somewhere in some kind of filing system. You can imagine how little confidence I have in that process. My guess is that someone wrote down the wrong number in the VIN when recording it in Arkansas, but since Ohio had no way of knowing, they just issued new titles when the car showed up here in 1972. Now that they can talk to Arkansas, however...

 

I should note that in both cases, I bought the cars after having examined the titles personally. I don't buy cars with questionable titles, I don't buy cars with title skips (an older owner's signature and a blank new owner field), and I don't buy cars with salvage titles. Both of these cars had brand new, valid, documented Ohio titles issued within the past 3 years.

 

So no, you can't just show up with a piece of paper and claim you own a car. It needs to be official in the records at whatever bureau keeps track of such things. Having access to the guy who runs the printing press that makes titles will do you no good.

 

What people are actually doing with these old titles (not all, but this is exactly why that 1932 Ford title is $1000) is using them to title a car without a title, say, a replica 1932 Ford coupe with a fabricated chassis, a fiberglass body, and a Chevy engine. There's no Ford serial number anywhere near that car, but hot rods that are titled as what they appear to be (i.e. a 1932 Ford) instead of a "2016 Home-Built" are considerably more valuable. Or, as I suspect in the case of the car I bought with a salvage title, someone lost their paperwork and couldn't register the car. To solve the problem, they found and bought the title to a similar wrecked car and put THAT number on their car. Hence the salvage title in another state where the car never lived. Both are illegal, but if you had a high-end Full Classic for which you could not get a title, a $1000 "collector's item" would seem real handy, no?

 

31 minutes ago, lump said:

MANY people, when they find a cool old car in a barn and buy it with a notarized bill of sale (from a legitimate owner), will "sell" their car through the mail to someone in one of those states which do not require a "title" for cars older than a certain age. Then the "buyer" takes the notarized bill of sale into his title agency, and gets a brand new title issued in HIS name. Now he legally owns "your" vehicle. Next, he visits a notary and signs that title out of his name, as the "seller." Then the title is mailed back to you. Now you take that notarized title to your own local notary, sign your name to it as the "buyer," and take it to your state's title bureau. They may require an inspection, but soon you will have a new title for that car issued in your name. MUCH safer than altering VIN's, which is highly illegal. On the other hand, should it turn out that the car you bought from the barn was listed as stolen years ago....you have a problem, Houston. 

 

That's what those title services do, the ones that advertise that they can conjure a title from nothingness. They're based in New York (not much anymore), Alabama, Georgia, or Maine. What do those states have in common? They do not issue titles for vehicles older than 25 years, only a transferable registration. Essentially, you're "selling" your car to that company on a bill of sale, and they're selling it back to you with one of these registrations attached. It used to work a lot, then states caught on that it was happening and cars from those states got some extra scrutiny. Cost was usually more than $1000 and it worked about 80% of the time--not great odds if you're spending the cash and know you'll get flagged if it fails. Today, I think those companies will vanish completely due to this new system in place that tracks a car's history back to whenever they started keeping records. A sudden appearance in a database somewhere will trigger all kinds of red flags.

 

I'm sure guys put vintage titles on the wall of their garages. I'm also sure a lot more of them are used to create something from nothing.

[Curti]

Hopefully other states will go down the road that Wisconsin has paved.

[Restorer32]

While I am strongly against more gov'mint regulation, titling is one area where it would be good to have one nationwide system for titling and transferring ownership of vehicles and titling vehicles where the original title has simply disappeared or never existed.  Of course the danger is that the feds would make the process so cumbersome that it would be a disaster. " If you like your title you can keep your title" ?

[Restorer32]

In PA there is only one way to get a title for a vehicle and that requires the services of a lawyer familiar with the process. It takes about $700 and 6-12 months but eventually you get a "court directed title". My bro went thru this process with a 1949 Triumph body #1 (the car not the bike).

[F&J]

That Wisconsin bill has a huge problem.  On the last sentence in the first column, it says that if your barnfind's VIN is already in use on another car, then your car cannot be titled and that you risk seizure.    That is ridiculous.  Many registration papers that were issued yearly as well as old titles which are both sold on open markets, and these should NOT disallow the "real" car with it's authentic VIN stamped number.

 

One top Ford hotrod builder in California had charges filed against his company for using old "old paper documents" to register fiberglass reproduction cars as a "real vintage car".   Why should a  repro car using bogus VIN cause the owner of the real VIN'd car to be subject to seizure, if the repro car filed the VIN before the genuine VIN'd barnfind was found?    That's just dumb thinking on the Wisc DMV

[vermontboy]

Another downside of Federal regulation for titling is "nanny state" issues. Thinking of "cash for clunkers" programs and forcing older cars off the roads (or at least regulating your ability to drive them when you want to). Eventually it could serve as a cleansing mechanism for non-autonomous vehicles.

 

Far-fetched - hardly. There is no limit to what some politicians will do for the common good".

[capngrog]

 

 

16 minutes ago, vermontboy said:

Another downside of Federal regulation for titling is "nanny state" issues. Thinking of "cash for clunkers" programs and forcing older cars off the roads (or at least regulating your ability to drive them when you want to). Eventually it could serve as a cleansing mechanism for non-autonomous vehicles.

 

Far-fetched - hardly. There is no limit to what some politicians will do for the common good".

A few years ago, I would have dismissed Vermontboy's concerns as irrational; however, having witnessed the total disregard for the People's Rights/Opinions on the part of the D.C. politicians (of both parties), I must agree with his concerns over what "Government" may do with an extensive data base of privately-owned vehicles.  To paraphrase Obama and Restorer 32:  "If you like your car, you can keep your car".

 

I'm from the government, and I'm here to help,

Grog

 

P.S.  Restorer 32:  I in no way meant to link your and Obama's philosophies.  If I offended you, please accept my apologies.

[John_S_in_Penna]

On 9/30/2016 at 6:34 PM, cpmaraziti said:

Any thoughts on the possible interest of a car museum in old titles? I have about 5,000 of them from my Father-in-Laws junk yard closed down I 1965 for the construction of a NJ highway. Titles date back to the early 20's.

 

The A.A.C.A. Library in Hershey, Penna. would be

an excellent place to preserve that history.

Don't throw them away, as such a large

collection documents what cars were on the

roads, and in what proportion.

[Matt Harwood]

It would be really nice to have one uniform, national system of titles. Right now, every single state is different and they all have different rules and forms. Some require notarized signatures, some don't. Some have dealer transferable titles, some don't.

 

At the moment, I'm dealing with an early V8 Ford from New Jersey where the title doesn't match the frame number. Well, it does match, except there's a '5' at the beginning of the serial number and a 'Z' at the end on the paper title, digits that do not appear on the steel frame of the car. Ohio has rejected it as non-matching and I can't get a title. I just learned that New Jersey's DMV adds the first digit to the VIN to reflect the number of previous owners and the Z suffix means that it was previously registered out of state. So now I have a car that has correct numbers on it and technically matches the title, but the fact that the idiots in New Jersey add their own  numbers means Ohio won't touch it.

 

How is that helping anybody?

[F&J]

Just now, Matt Harwood said:

It would be really nice to have one uniform, national system of titles. Right now, every single state is different and they all have different rules and forms. Some require notarized signatures, some don't. Some have dealer transferable titles, some don't.

I always agree with your posts, but not this one....the first one ever

 

You can rest assured, that if the feds do this, they will certainly take the worst statute from each State, and leave us with hurdles that cannot be jumped on certain "barnfind" or long lost cars.

 

Decades ago, I bought a low priced semi-collector car in New Hampshire that had no registration or title.  I told the seller I at least need a current registration for my State of CT.  He said "no problem, I can go to my local one-employee Town Hall, and get new plates for a few bucks in just a few minutes, and I don't even need insurance"  He said it was less bother than getting a fishing permit.

 

.

[Xander Wildeisen]

Fraud is committed by people who want to cheat the system, we all know that. But what no one wants to talk about, is how fraud is committed by people being forced to do it through entrapment. I understand each States rights to run their State how the people of that State want it to be run. But some of the differences in State laws open the door to shady stuff. And any one with a brain does not want to get involved in shady stuff. If you get people with bad intentions in any positions of the system. Then the whole thing can go off course, like what we see in Goverment (on both sides) The DMV or Transportation  Department, would be no exception. If the lid on the cookie jar is left off, some one will stick their hand in it, or try and find some one to do it for them. It is called entrapment, and it is one reason this Country is such a mess. I have made comments on this forum about building\restoring cars for a living. What about selling them? A classic car dealer. I am in no way saying that there is a bad shipping company out there. But with their need to find drivers, it opens the door to getting a bad apple. It would seem that if a dealer sells a good car to some one out of state, dealer and buyer talk on the phone back and forth. Get a good relationship going. Dealer ships a good car, bad apple driver turns on headlights, adjusts carb and so on. Buyer gets dead battery, and rough running car. Buyer slams dealer, dealer is a lier. Buyer calls dealer with ligament complaints, dealer knows they are not true, so stands his ground. A good honest classic car dealer can get a bad rap over time, not from anything he\she did wrong. But from the actions of another trying to take out the competition on behalf of some one else. Entrapment with titles can be used as well. Have a car with good paper work, but people know there will be a problem in the title process. Advertise car so a chosen dealer\person can see it. List it at a good price, BAM you just bought a headache. It does go on, now you spend your time and money to straighten out the problem, wish you never bought it. Price it to get rid of it, same people buy it back. Fixed up a little, problems gone on your dime. Or sell out of it, passing the headache on. Now you are guilty of blank,blank,blank. And you did not really do a thing. Set up by a system, to keep the ever growing snow ball a'rolling. It is very hard to have a small business in this country anymore, we are cutting our own throats. We have so many rules and laws in this country. I would not be surprised that if you eat food in this state and then drive in that state and use the bathroom. You just broke some waste disposal law of some kind.

[Matt Harwood]

I think you ascribe to malice that which can better be explained by incompetence.

[Ben Bruce aka First Born]

10 minutes ago, Matt Harwood said:

I think you ascribe to malice that which can better be explained by incompetence.

 

 Matt, I had to read your statement two or three times to understand your meaning. THEN read the preceding post  . AHHH, now I understand. I like it!

 

  Ben

[Xander Wildeisen]

Ascribe, to think to be the result of. To think of as belonging to, or coming from.  Malice, a feeling of wanting to hurt or harm some one. Incompetence, the condition of being incompetent. I am not really sure what you are trying to say? We all live in different places, and what goes on here might not go on there. I have been honest in my posts pointing out things that I have seen or heard of. If you want to say I

am full of BS go for it. But there is no malice. 

Edited October 19, 2016 by Xander Wildeisen (see edit history)

[Matt Harwood]

It wasn't an insult, Xander, please don't take it that way. I was simply saying that a vast majority of the screw-ups in the world are because people are incompetent, not because there's a devious mind at work trying to screw someone. Yes, there's plenty of that, but a car that runs badly runs badly because of an incompetent mechanic, not a truck driver trying to give a dealer a bad reputation. Machiavellian schemes are great for movies, but most people are just simple and direct, not devious.

[JV Puleo]

Incompetence...

Years ago I bought a Norton Commando. It came with a title... (RI only requires a title to register if the vehicle is 10 years old or newer). The bike was about 9 years old. The title was fine and it was signed over to me but the guy I bought it from had never registered it, so was unable to transfer the title to me.

I went to the Registry of Motor Vehicles with my title and notarized bill of sale and asked at the "information" booth how to handle this. Oh, says the registry employee... "they never thought of stuff like that when they wrote the law." He recommended that I write to the state asking for a duplicate title using the name on the title and my address. Then, sign the title over to myself, forging his signature.

In the end, I didn't do this which I presumed was fraud even though the registry recommended it. I waited 6 months, until the title requirement ran out.

 

My own feeling is that our Registry, and I would guess all (or most) others, is the dumping ground for every otherwise unemployable relative of state legislators and bureaucrats. The amount of bone-headed stupidity I've encountered there is nearly unimaginable... so much so that when one meets a registry worker with a shred of common sense it's a memorable occasion. There actually are procedures to solve most problems but the employees don't know what they are and, being state employees of a monopoly, feel no obligation learn them. It's probably a taste of what everything in the Soviet Union was like.

 

It would be nice if every member of the legislature had to to register their own car in person (rather than have a dealer do it for them)... they could experience the the "dumb-as-a-stump" bureaucracy they foist on the rest of us.

 

[Digger914]

12 hours ago, Matt Harwood said:

 

There's just no way this kind of scam can work. Simply having a title with the right numbers on it doesn't mean it exists or is official. The numbers are assigned by and maintained by the county-level clerk of courts in most states, so simply showing up with a piece of paper that has the right numbers on it and claiming you own a particular car just isn't going to fly. Not ever.

 

About seven months ago, a new computer system (organized and funded in part by the Department of Homeland Security) started linking all the databases in all 50 states, which is causing a lot of problems for hobbyists.

 

Hearing that Homeland Security has made it impossible to sell stolen vehicles with altered VIN's and forged titles gives me such a feeling of security, that I will never again need to double check the alarm when I lock up the garage. Wonder if my insurance company knows about this, guess I'm going to have to call my agent and find out if garaging my car is still a policy requirement.

 

"Simply having a title with the right numbers on it doesn't mean it exists or is official" and the Secret Service didn't go out of business, when business supply stores started selling counterfeit bill detection pens.  

[Matt Harwood]

Just to follow up, just today we got good title to the car with the identity crisis. Despite the fact that Arkansas still maintains that the car registered there owns the VIN, Ohio's DMV said that since the car has been titled in Ohio since 1972 and Ohio has issued three good titles to three different owners since then, it was not reasonable for us to be stuck with a car and no title now. Shockingly, they made the right decision and released the title so we can register the car in our name. Unfortunately, if we sell the car out of state, there's no guarantee that the next owner won't have this same problem with their state's DMV. There's no way I can guarantee that it'll be clear--we have clear Ohio title, the title is good, but will other states honor it? We'll find out...

 

Again, without the computer saying "this title is good," there's just no way to make up a fake title and claim ownership of a car. It needs to be in the system and even then there are glitches. The paper is a technicality, the computer's database is reality.

[Dynaflash8]

I have a couple of titles from past times in our family.  I asked a lawyer who was at the AACA Philadelphia Meetings one year during on of the Seminars.  He warned me that I could get into serious trouble if I sold those titles to an individual.  I still have them....end of story.  Oh, I don't remember what the trouble would be.

[vermontboy]

All of the reasons above are why the HAMB does not allow titles to be sold on their site.

[Digger914]

10 hours ago, Matt Harwood said:

Just to follow up, just today we got good title to the car with the identity crisis. Despite the fact that Arkansas still maintains that the car registered there owns the VIN, Ohio's DMV said that since the car has been titled in Ohio since 1972 and Ohio has issued three good titles to three different owners since then, it was not reasonable for us to be stuck with a car and no title now. Shockingly, they made the right decision and released the title so we can register the car in our name. Unfortunately, if we sell the car out of state, there's no guarantee that the next owner won't have this same problem with their state's DMV. There's no way I can guarantee that it'll be clear--we have clear Ohio title, the title is good, but will other states honor it? We'll find out...

 

Again, without the computer saying "this title is good," there's just no way to make up a fake title and claim ownership of a car. It needs to be in the system and even then there are glitches. The paper is a technicality, the computer's database is reality.

 

Paper Title is a legal ownership document, registering the transfer of ownership is the technicality and with auto titles this registration is usually renewed on an annual bases. The computer data base is nothing more than an electronic file cabinet and if you don't mind breaking the law, getting a fake title into the file cabinet isn't all that hard to do. Obviously this isn't to hard to do legally either, as after Ohio noticed this, they allowed this dubious transfer and issued you a paper title guaranteed good in Ohio.

 

 

 

[Larry Schramm]

I have the VW Camper that we have owned for 25+ years and registered on an off over the years.  For some reason the state asked me to bring in the title to get new plates this year.  I asked what gives, and was told that is just the way it is.  This is even with the state issuing new license plates almost every year for the vehicle.   I keep remembering "I am from the government and here to help you"

[Dave Henderson]

More title fun and games....   I titled my still-owned '37 Cord in Virginia in 1958 and obtained permanent antique vehicle plates for it in 1964.  Fast forwarding to 2007, the Virginia DMV sent an individual letter for each car owned registered with "permanent" antique plates to their owners, requiring they certify that insurance was in force and that the car would pass whatever safety requirements were in effect for the year of the car etc.  I received the letters for my other antique plated cars, but none for the Cord.  Upon inquiring, I was told by the DMV that they had no record of the car ever having a Va. title, or a registration!  Although they finally did renew my registration and tags, had I not had both documents, think of the deep yogurt (or something else) that I would have been in. 
Then there's the matter of there being another set of permanent tags just like the aforesaid ones of mine that are known to be floating around at this time, but that's another story.

Edited November 6, 2016 by Dave Henderson (see edit history)