December 2021
Vol. 49, Iss. 12
Know before you buy
Photo: WYDOT
Don’t be a victim of odometer fraud
The title history for the pickup showed a reported mileage of 220,000 in 2012. It was sold by a Wyoming Licensed Dealer with 134,000 miles in 2019, with no record the odometer had legally been reset to 0 miles.
Wyoming licensed vehicle dealer unlawfully rolls back odometers By Shane Fox, Compliance and Investigation Imagine you and your teenage son set out to purchase a used vehicle for him to drive to and from school. It’s an exciting endeavor, although it creates some anxiety. You want the vehicle he purchases to be safe and reliable, but you also want to teach him the financial responsibility of buying something valuable within his budget and how to save for expenses relating to owning a vehicle and upgrading in the future. You find the perfect lower mileage vehicle at a licensed dealership and feel confident it will be all the dealership said it was cracked up to be, since they are licensed and bonded. Soon after the purchase is final, the vehicle starts having problems so you take it to a mechanic. Based on the mechanic’s diagnosis, you wonder how perfect this vehicle really is, so you run a vehicle history report. And, there it is, mileage discrepancy! Now you are not so sure this vehicle is safe to drive. This hypothetical became a reality for a Wyoming resident. Upon discovering the mileage discrepancy, she became concerned she and her son had become victims of odometer fraud and contacted the police department in town where the car was
purchased. The police department reached out to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) Office of Odometer Fraud in Denver, looking for guidance on how to proceed with the case. NHTSA only handles large scale cases that cross state lines, but fortunately they were able to refer the case to WYDOT Compliance & Investigation because they had partnered with WYDOT in the past to investigate and prosecute major Federal odometer fraud cases involving Wyoming dealers. The vehicle in question was a 2004 Ford pickup, sold to a Wyoming licensed dealer with a reported mileage of 172,042 miles. The dealer sold it with 102,600 miles in 2020; a whopping 69,442 miles less than what the dealer purchased it with. According to NHTSA, about 500,000 used vehicles per year are sold with odometer fraud, and a fraudster can profit around $1,000 dollars for every 10,000 miles the odometer is rolled back. Odometer rollbacks are a nationwide problem, especially with older vehicles because they are exempt from the Federal Odometer Disclosure Statement requirement. For example, people who Continued on page 3
