Car Title DilemmaCartitles.com helped me do the impossible when it came to buying a car that had no title. I purchased this 2006 Toyota Camry from a garage sale for $500. After purchasing the car for cash, I was told I could get the title in about a week after they found it inside their house. That never happened. I found out that the car was actually titled in somebody else’s name, not related to anyone that I bought the car from, and this person had also already passed away.
Seeking SolutionsI started researching what I could do in this crazy situation. Cartitles.com was the first place and the best place that I found. I booked a live reading consultation and explained my entire problem. They told me exactly what I needed to do and how to do it in my certain case. My car required the court-ordered title process, where I had to make a lot of paperwork and do a lot of diligent research to prove that this car was not going to be going to anyone else and that nobody else wanted it.
The Process with Cartitles.comThere is no way I could have expedited these processes fast unless I used cartitles.com. They were able to help me make all the paperwork I needed and give me all the knowledge and advice I needed when I went to go talk to other people that could help me with the title at the DMV or at the courthouse. Within 3 months, I was in front of a judge on my computer via Zoom and was ruled as the owner of the car, and now I have the title in my name.
Conclusion and RecommendationHere, if you have any crazy car title needs like I had, don’t hesitate to reach out to cartitles.com. They have an answer for almost everything, and I guarantee you they will help you in some kind of way. Thank you so much again, cartitles.com.
Visit Our YouTube Channel for more insights and discussions on various topics. Consider subscribing to our YouTube channel. Click here!
Natural Disasters and Vehicle TitlesNo matter what state you live in, you may be subject to certain natural disasters. This year we’ve seen hurricanes in Florida, fires in California and Oregon, hail storms in Texas. How do these relate to your car title and what steps should you take for vehicle titles when you’re involved with some type of natural disaster? Well, first of all, before the season or before an event happens, make sure that you have physical control of your title certificate. If your vehicle’s damaged or lost in a natural disaster, you’re going to need your title to file an insurance claim. So you want to make sure you have your hands on it. Put it in a safe place that’s impervious to water or fire. You can buy a little fireproof bag from Amazon for $15 or $20. Put that in a Ziploc bag so if it’s flooded, it doesn’t get damaged. Because if you have to try to replace your title after a natural disaster, it could be difficult because many government agencies are shut down for a while, and they may not be able to issue the title without proper documentation.
Steps After a Natural DisasterNow if you have been through a natural disaster, the first thing you want to do is make sure you put your hands on that title document and start that insurance claim as soon as you can. Make sure you get a good appraisal; you get good underwriting for the insurance claims so that if the vehicle’s been damaged, all of the damage is properly documented. Sometimes a body shop will look at a car and do what’s called an initial appraisal, but then also put a note there might be supplemental damage that could put it over the threshold for being totaled. So you want to make sure you have those appraisals done as soon as you can so that the final appraisal amount is submitted to the insurance company as soon as possible.
Filing an Insurance ClaimNow, if the vehicle requires an insurance claim, which it probably will, you want to make sure that it’s filed with the insurance company. Get them the title properly signed. Have them show you how to sign it because if you sign it incorrectly, the claim may not be able to be processed. If there’s a lien holder involved, they probably have to sign off as well. If you have lost your title in the natural disaster, now is the time to file for that duplicate replacement title as soon as you can. You can get some instructions on how to do that from our website, cartitles.com. It’ll show you how to file for a duplicate title; that’s done through the DMV in your state. You have to fill out a few forms; sometimes it has to be notarized, and sometimes you have to appear in person to show your ID to make sure that the person they’re giving the title to is actually the owner. They don’t want to be handing out your title to the wrong person, so they may verify that you are really the owner of the vehicle.
Importance of Replacement TitlesNatural disasters are many times a reason why a client needs to get a replacement title because either the car or the title certificate has been damaged. You want to get back whole so that your vehicle belongs to you, is properly documented, and you get your insurance claim as fast as you can. If you have other questions, you can access our website, cartitles.com.
Vehicle Title Fraud
Here’s another video in our series on vehicle title fraud and this has to do with properly signing over titles. Look, if you have a vehicle title that needs to be signed by the owner, sometimes it’s tempting for a person to say, “Well, I’ll just sign their name on the back.” In some cases, the signature is not immediately verified. But many times, what will happen is if there’s not a supporting notarized bill of sale or notarized transfer form, the DMV will then reach out and contact that owner to ask them, “Did you sign the document?”
The Risk of Forged Signatures
Even if the new title’s already issued, they might do this after the fact. So you could find out later that your title gets revoked and you’re prosecuted for fraud because the DMV knows that fraud is a growing problem. Since they don’t verify the signature at the time of sale, what happened in this story is there was a tree company that had a bunch of trucks, and somebody fraudulently got a duplicate title by forging a document. So, let’s say you are a person or company that owns a vehicle, and that vehicle is in your name, you have a title in your name, and somebody forges a signature to get a duplicate title and then transfers it to themselves. Now they own the vehicle.
Challenges in Obtaining Duplicate Titles
A lot of times, you may run into some frustration, wondering, “Why can’t I just get a duplicate? Can I just call up, fax something over, or do it online?” The reason they don’t do that is because they want to make sure that the person getting the actual duplicate title is really the person who’s the owner. They don’t want to just be giving out your titles to anybody, and they do it for protection.
Understanding DMV Bureaucracy: Protection Over Convenience
It does make it a little less convenient for you to get a new title for your vehicle, but it does protect you from having problems with the vehicle later. So, the next time you’re complaining about how hard it is to do vehicle title paperwork and how much the DMV gives you the runaround, don’t despair. It’s made difficult for a reason. Yes, they are a little bit bureaucratic, but they’re also doing it to protect vehicle owners to make sure that there’s no title fraud and nobody is losing their vehicle.
The Importance of Title Transfer Restrictions
Look, you wouldn’t want it to happen to you. If you had your car in your driveway, and one day you come home and find out that the title’s not in your name because somebody forged a title, you’d wish for more complex restrictions on title transfers. So, it does make it a little harder when you have to do it legitimately, but it also protects you from title fraud.
Ensuring Proper Title Handling
Make sure if you are doing anything with a vehicle title—getting a new title, or a title recovery—that whatever is being done is done properly. If you’re not doing it yourself, if you’re hiring somebody or paying someone to do the title work for you, ensure you totally understand what they’re doing. Make sure you check on your own that it’s legitimate, legal, and appropriate for your scenario. Don’t take anybody’s word for it or a website’s word for it that what they’re doing is legal. Make sure you double-check it yourself and match up that what they’re doing is correct for your scenario so you don’t run into a problem later where you have legal issues or your title gets revoked.
Feedback Loops in Government ServicesOne way to think of economy is just in terms of feedback loops. The feedback loop for government-provided services to be excellent is weak because if, like if you have a government monopoly or anything, you as a consumer have no alternatives. Think of the Department of Motor Vehicles like the DMV. It’s very inefficient. You wouldn’t want the DMV to make cars.
Challenges with Government MonopoliesAnd if you don’t get good service from the government, what do you do? Who do you complain to? Competition breeds excellence because two organizations or more organizations are fighting to make the end consumer happy. One will gain market share if they do a better job than the other.
The Case for Limited Government InvolvementSo, that’s why we really want government to do the least because it’s just got the broken feedback loop for improvement.
Check out the YouTube video details by clicking here!
Why Mechanics Lean Titles Are ChallengingSo why is it so hard to get a mechanics lean title for a vehicle and why is it not always the best way even to try to get a title? For many years, a lot of times repair shops, garages, towing companies have used the mechanics lean or towing lean process to get titles for vehicles. A lot of times they thought they were abandoned, and they wanted to get a title. They even sometimes took payments from outside parties to go through a fake mechanics lean process to get a title. A lot of times people with title problems will ask, “Well, can I just put a mechanics lean on the vehicle or I’ll just file for an abandoned mechanics lean?”
The Purpose of Mechanics LeanHere’s the problem: the mechanics lean process is a privilege provided to licensed automotive repair shops in order to get paid for work that a customer stiffed them on the bill. So, somebody brings in a car to get fixed then decides they don’t want to pay. The mechanics lean is designed exactly for what the words mean—mechanics lean. It’s not really a title process; it’s a way to get paid for your mechanics work. However, that privilege is very frequently abused—or “abused” is a strong word, but it’s expanded to try to get mechanic shops to get titles for vehicles that maybe it’s a different story.
Government Tightens Mechanics Lean ProcessSo what the government has done, the different state DMVs have done, is to make the process very, very, very hard to do—harder than any other process. It’s harder than a bonded title, harder than a court-ordered title, harder than any other type because they want to make sure if the repair shop is doing it, that’s actually what they want to do. And here’s an example why. Here’s a very common case; you could look any day of the week, week of the year, and you can find more cases like this where some repair shop owners are doing title fraud.
Repair Shop Owners Committing FraudThose are the key words of the headline: repair shop owners title fraud. What they will do is make up fake work orders and fake records to say they’re filing a mechanics lean. They use the process to get titles for vehicles that maybe they bought at an auction with no title. Maybe their buddy bought it on Craigslist, maybe it has a lean they’re trying to get rid of, and because of the fact this process is very frequently abused by repair shops, the government knows this. The government is not stupid. They know that this process is a loophole that a repair shop can use to get a title, so they scrutinize every single one that comes through, and they audit them. They also use AI and algorithms to catch shops that are doing too many mechanics leans.
Government Scrutiny and AuditingHow do they find that out? Well, what they do is they look at your payroll, and they look at your sales tax you collect, and they know how big your shop is, right? So if you have one or two employees and you do sales tax that maybe says you work on three cars a day, 100 cars a month on average, they know that you should maybe do two or three mechanics leans a year based on the stats. If all of a sudden you’re doing more than that or you do three in one month, now they’re going to scrutinize that business. This is how people get caught, and this is what happened here, and they’re charged with a crime. This is actually a fraud crime in most states that you can get in trouble for.
Legal Consequences of Title FraudThe Department of Motor Vehicles, which is titles, arrested these people for the scam involving illegal lean sales of vehicles. There were five vehicles—not that many, five vehicles—but they were $60,000 vehicles because they added up to $300,000. Some high-end exotic vehicles. Falsifying title documents is the same as stealing it. This is their compliance enforcement officer. So if you’re ever tempted to use fake records or fake mechanics lean, or let somebody do it on your behalf, this is how they look at it as the government: falsifying title documents is the same as stealing it.
Mechanics Leans as a PrivilegeThat’s what they say. Now, whether you agree with this or not, we don’t have an opinion about it; it’s just the way that it is. The government knows that mechanics leans are necessary for legitimate licensed garages to get paid for their cars. But they also know that when you give that privilege, some people are going to abuse it, and some people are going to try to get away with getting free cars. How bad is the penalty? Well, they could face prison terms of 20 years—20 years—and restitution, meaning that they might have to pay back that $300,000. Now they’ll probably plea bargain it down a little bit, but it’s still going to be probably a felony.
The Fraudulent Mechanics Lean CaseOne of the people was the owner of S&M Auto Body, right? So another one was the owner of Sharp Transmission. Investigators say they falsified work orders for repairs and then sold the vehicles, right? So basically, they’re stealing the vehicles. They sold the vehicles to the same person. Fraudulent repair orders were used to complete lean sales for these vehicles, even though work was never done. Falsified title requests were sent to the DMV to get a title. Vehicles were personally used by one of the people; they sold it to one person, and he owned a dealership.
Using a Mechanics Lean for Legitimate TitlesSo the way it works is a mechanics lean is a powerful tool, but because of the fact it’s so powerful and it’s a loophole, it will be scrutinized more than any other type of paperwork. So if you’re thinking about using mechanics lean to get a title, just make sure that it’s actually what happened, and what happened is somebody brought a car into a shop for repairs, you have a signed repair order, and they didn’t pay the bill. Now, if you have a vehicle you need to get a title for, and you’re thinking that’s the method, you have other ways that’ll work better: court order title, bonded title, prior owner contact—all these methods. You’ll find them on our website, and they’re actually easier than a mechanics lean.
Mechanics Lean Process Is ComplicatedWith a mechanics lean, you have to send out all kinds of notices, you have to do auctions, you have to do affidavits, you have to do more work than any other title method, and it’s probably not going to work because they’re going to scrutinize it and audit it.
Tell us about your vehicle and we'll direct you to a title recovery method that matches your scenario.
"*" indicates required fields
