Using Mechanics Liens To Get Titles

Why Mechanics Lean Titles Are Challenging
So 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 Lean
Here’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 Process
So 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 Fraud
Those 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 Auditing
How 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 Fraud
The 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 Privilege
That’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 Case
One 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 Titles
So 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 Complicated
With 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.

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