Identity theft for cars

Authorities battle high-tech methods

Call it ID theft for cars.

Some law-abiding citizens have been surprised to be pulled over on suspicion of driving a stolen car. Often, the car isn't stolen, but its identity is — it's been cloned.

"It's the newest trend, mostly in high-end vehicle theft," said Dave Ecklund, a locally based special agent with the National Insurance Crime Bureau. "It's identity theft for vehicles, simply put."

This scam reaches a higher level of sophistication than the auto-theft ring busted up last month that detectives say involved a 30-something blonde and others who distracted dealership employees so they could switch fake keys for the real ones and have somebody drive off with the vehicles later.

Stealing the identity of cars originated in Canada in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Ecklund said he has assisted on about 15 such cases in the Lowcountry in the past couple of years. Problems don't usually appear until the owner makes an insurance claim or gets pulled over by police.

Here's how it works:

After thieves steal a car, any potential buyer who checks the vehicle identification number, or VIN, will notice that it's stolen. With a shady past, a car will fetch only a fraction of its actual value. With a clean history, however, it will command much more.

Cloning erases obvious signs that the car was stolen by exploiting the VIN, which some call the car's "fingerprint."

All vehicles made in 1981 or later have the 17-digit serial number stamped on the dashboard and inside the driver's door. Police use it to check for stolen vehicles, mechanics to identify the correct replacement parts and manufacturers for recalls.

After stealing their car, thieves head to another state. They write down the VIN of a parked car, sometimes even at a dealership. Then, they make a counterfeit plate of that VIN number and swap it for the original one on the stolen car.

Thieves can register the duplicate car using an altered or counterfeit title from a different state. Since most state Departments of Motor Vehicles don't communicate with each other, the state doesn't catch on.

Ecklund said he's come across cars that have been cloned more than a dozen times. Though the problem hasn't surfaced much here in a year, he said the cloned cars are surely out there.

Jason King, a spokesman for American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators, said the lack of a system for sharing title histories among all 50 states creates a situation "ripe for fraud." A 1992 law mandated a system that would allow all DMV offices to do this, but other priorities, such as homeland security and the pre-millennium Y2K readjustment, intervened.

Currently, 14 state DMVs can share this information in real time through the National Motor Vehicle Title Information System, he said. About two-thirds submit information to the database. The South Carolina DMV is developing an interface that should give the state access to the database by July 2009, communications coordinator Jean Smolen said. The department received a U.S. Department of Justice grant for the project.

"The good news is that while VIN-cloning is a bit of an epidemic," King said, "there is an antidote."

Reach Noah Haglund at nhaglund@postandcourier.com or 937-5550.