Utah is ripe for odometer fraud on vehicles older than 10 years, first because this is a “buyer beware” state, which means once you hand over the cash, you have little or no recourse. Second, it is NOT required to report actual mileage on titles for vehicles over 10 years; these cars are “exempt” and that is all that is necessary on the title. We were scammed by a Grantsville, UT couple who listed a 1997 Honda Civic on KSL.com. They listed the car as having 129,000 miles and claimed they were selling it for their father who lived in Orem. Carfax showed the Orem registrations over the years, and even offered their “buy back” option on it so we felt pretty confident about the purchase.
The price was higher than it should have been, it was listed at $3000.00, but it wasn’t too far out of line for what we saw on KSL.com, and we attributed the price to the low mileage, the Carfax report, and the condition. We test drove it; the odometer was working and nothing seemed out of line. The woman selling the car knew EXACTLY how to work the scam on trusting people. She had the Bill of Sale already written up and signed by her “father,” ready for us to sign. She explained she’d written the sale amount at $1500.00 so our tax would be lower, which isn’t uncommon when buying from an individual rather than a car dealer.
Coincidentally, the Carfax “buy back” guarantee amount was $1500.00 – a fact we didn’t know until AFTER we gave her $2800.00 CASH. We didn’t see any red flags after looking at and driving the car, so we didn’t read everything in the Bill of Sale. It had a HUGE red flag!! She had all the usual verbage that takes all liability off of the seller, which is normal, but at the bottom, it read “Vehicle is exempt from odometer requirements, and miles are no way represented or guaranteed as actual.” The title also stated “exempt” on the mileage report. Both of these should have told us there was a problem, but the odometer was working at the time and we didn’t discover the problem until my husband changed the oil and pushed the “trip” button to reset it.
The odometer stopped working at that point. We have since discovered this is the third car that we know of that this couple has sold on KSL.com – all of them are older than 10 years, all of them claim low mileage (the latest one is posted as a 1998 Honda with 124000.00 miles).
This post was submitted by Lori.
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