ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. – A woman in Central Florida found herself out of a car and $21,000 after discovering the used car she bought was reported stolen. The vehicle, known as a “clone car,” had a fake Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) from another car.
Yenis Sosa purchased a Lexus through Facebook Marketplace last May. She and the seller agreed that he would drive down from Jacksonville and that he would meet Sosa and her mechanic at a bank in Altamonte Springs.
“He gave me the title, the CARFAX, the bill of sale. He signed the paper. I gave him $21,000 cash,” Sosa said.
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That same day, Sosa took the car to the DMV to get it registered. She said everything went smoothly, “They registered the Lexus. I paid for the taxes. The lady from the DMV came outside with me and checked the VIN.”
Months later, in December, Sosa said an investigator from Florida Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles showed up at her door, saying she needed to bring the Lexus back to the DMV because someone tried to register a car with the same VIN in Georgia.
The VIN for the car out of state was legitimate, but investigators told Sosa her car was reported stolen from a Hertz in 2023.
“The guy had put and faked the VIN, faked the title, the CARFAX. Everything was not real. Not even him,” Sosa said.
Investigators called Sosa’s vehicle a “clone car.”
“Basically you have a stolen vehicle or a vehicle that’s been salvaged and the VIN displayed on it, the public VIN, the one the DMV tracks it by, that the manufacturer signs that car, some of the criminals will take those VIN numbers and replace them with VIN numbers off other vehicles that have like a clean title or maybe registered in a different state and then they’ll try to either resell the car or export the car out of the country,” Lt. Paul Volkerson with the Orange County Sheriff’s Office said.
Volkerson has worked in law enforcement for the past 25 years, most of that time in the auto theft division. He told News 6 his department confiscates around 30 to 40 clone cars a year in Orange County alone.
He detailed how the suspects replace the VIN in the dashboard.
“In order to get this out, they’ll pop the windshield out, remove the true vehicle identification number plate, put the fraudulent one in, put the windshield back on and that makes it harder to tell if it’s been removed or replaced.”
Volkerson explained it is difficult to spot a fake VIN.
“A lot of the re-VIN vehicles we’ve recovered over the years that I’ve been involved with, the vast majority of them come from an individual sale,” Volkerson said. “A lot of the re-VIN vehicles and clone vehicles do not go through these large dealerships. They’ll be sold by individuals on Facebook Marketplace, or other small platforms that sell cars, or a referral from a friend, or on the side of the road with a ‘for sale’ sign.”
Florida does not have a lemon law for used cars that are purchased individually, so News 6 asked if people should steer away from buying vehicles through an individual. Volkerson advised there are things consumers can do to try to prevent themselves from falling victim.
“100% eliminated is hard to do,” Volkerson said. “But if you take those steps and make sure that you’re looking into the vehicle’s history a little bit more through Carfax, National Insurance Crime Bureau, DMV, it will helping eliminate the possibility of buying one of these cloned vehicles.”
CARFAX, National Crime Insurance Bureau and the Florida Highway Safety and Motor Vehicle also offer free VIN checks for vehicles. Another option is the Orange County Sheriff’s Office.
“If you have a question about a car that you’re looking to purchase, that you have some questions about you don’t feel may be right, you can always call our auto theft unit, bring the vehicle down here, do the transaction in the parking lot, have the auto theft unit look at the car and they can tell you if there’s any discrepancies with the VIN,” Volkerson told News 6.
There are red flags to look out for while purchasing a used car:
- Misspelled words on the door sticker where the VIN sticker is located.
- The VIN plate on the dashboard has shifted.
- The name of the seller does not match the name on the title.
- If the car has been wrecked or totaled in a crash before.
- If the vehicle odometer is different to the car that’s being sold. For instance, the odometer reading may be 40,000 miles when you do the VIN check, but the car you’re looking at only has 20,000 miles on it.