Yep. In ‘99 I shopped for a ‘92 Jeep Cherokee and found one with a For Sale sign in it’s window sitting in a church parking lot. I called the number and participated in a demonstration-drive with the seller, a used-car guy operating out of his home. It had 80K miles on the odometer and drove nice.
I was about to withdraw the money from my bank but was also doing my usual background-checks that I ordinarily do when buying vehicles... I checked for the registered past-owner and called them to see what they might say about it. The previous owner of this car was a used car dealer in Bryan, Tx.
When I talked to him he praised the car, as he had driven it for his own personal car for a year before selling it at auction. He said the only reason he sold it was because of the high-mileage.
I replied, “I don’t consider 80K to be ”high mileage”.
He responded, “That car had 190K when I sold it!”
I contacted Texas Dept of Public Safety (I was a pilot for the state at the time and often had DPS Officials as passengers so had no qualms about checking into the matter) and they sent an investigator out. We met AT the church where the car was being parked for visibility...and sat in his unmarked car two blocks away where we could observe the car.
The officer called the phone number, the seller showed up 20 mins later,.... the officer (in plain clothes) took a test-drive... He told me to wait (unseen) in his car. I watched them return to the church parking lot after the test-drive and the officer pretended to look under the hood, etc., .... when a Marked Austin Police Patrol Car showed up and a uniformed officer spun that guy around, putting him up against the car and handcuffing him.
I provided a written statement, the undercover officer told me they’d be “in touch” .... but the guy pled guilty in court and was sentenced to 6 months, fined $10K, and lost his business license (sales-tax permit) and also got investigated for sales/use-tax evasion. Don’t know the outcome of that.
Turns out he had 4 other cars of which he’d also falsified the odometers sitting in various parking lots around town. He bought them all at out-of-town car-auctions and ran his business out of his home.... which then was foreclosed 4 months later as he sat in jail near Houston.
Moral: It’s not difficult to find and talk to prior owners of vehicles. The local Kubota dealer gave me the original selling dealer info of my tractor. I called them and they gave me the original owner’s name, address, and 50-hr service-record information. I wrote him and he told me he sold it after the 50 hr service because he’d decided he preferred a HST transmission.
The second owner sold it to me... and HE was the shifty-one who deliberately hid wiring damage... but that’s another story and no wire-eating mouse or shifty owner is invulnerable.
(Easy fix.)
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