Odometer fraud

"Court rolls back cure to odometer tampering" "Appellate judges reject huge punitive damages to defrauded car buyer"

""When Mike Perez bought his 1990 Cutlass, the dealer said the car's only previous owner had driven it just 28,000 miles.

So when Perez discovered it actually had seven previous owners and close to 100,000 miles, he sued and won $500,000 in punitive damages, which a federal judge ruled was necessary to discourage such fraud.

Now, as the result of a little-noticed appellate court ruling, victims of odometer fraud in Illinois will find it a lot harder to win that kind of money. And by overturning the award, consumer advocates say, the court eliminated a major deterrent to a crime that already goes undetected and unpunished far too often.

The July decision, which is being appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, 'declares open season on used-car buyers,' said Rosemary Shahan, president of Consumers for Auto Reliability and Safety."

– Chicago Tribune, February 18, 2001

 

"Lots of used lemons" "Theres a whole new generation
of secondhand cars out there. One in ten is a disaster
waiting to happen."

"In a nine-state study of two-to-four-year-old used cars, CNW Marketing/Research found that one in 12 cars had its odometer tampered with, and that the average rollback is 22,500, about one-third of the true mileage. SUVs top the list of tampered vehicles…Rolling back odometers can mean big money to car sellers, as much as 30 perecent over the true value for a car. Overall, Morse (of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) estimates that this fraud may cost consumers a whopping $10 billion each year. 'People purchasing these cars lose more than their money,' says Rosemary Shahan, president of CARS. 'Their safety could be at stake.' "

– Readers Digest, October 2000