The Herald Journal has an excellent write up* of another case of auto dealers accused of failing to pay off loans and properly recording vehicles. They include a good summary of the consequences for car owners:
The suspects are also accused of not paying off existing loans on trade-in vehicles. Roberts said the Campbells were falsely representing that they were paying off loans from trade-in vehicles.This is similar to other title fraud situations we've reported on previously here and here and one of the reasons we encourage lenders to use ELT.
“The finance companies were paying the money but it was not going to pay off the loans,” he said. “So the person who did a trade-in would have not one problem but two problems. The first problem is that their bank or finance company still wants money for the (traded) car, the second problem is they have a vehicle that they do not have title to so if they wanted to sell it, they could not.”
The state of Utah does offer an Electronic Lien Transfer program. Because the program is currently administered solely by the state, DDI is currently unable to link Premier eTitleLien™ to Utah. Stay tuned...
* 1/29/2010: Former auto salesmen charged
Image: Sad Car :( by Félix Adorno
