Where is the odometer
How to spot odometer rollback fraud on your used vehicle
at first tonight if you have purchased a
used car I'm sure you're hoping it
didn't have any problem well we have a
context of a consumer alert about cars
that have had their odometers rolled
back
good evening I'm Anne Trujillo and I'm
Shannon Ogden there are nearly 28,000
cars just in the Denver area that have
fake odometer readings that's up 11%
from last year done four sevens Jace
Larson shows how these crooks are
changing odometer and we have the one
thing you can do right now to check the
car sitting in your garage or driveway
this is a 1991 Jaguar XJS this is Tim
Tunney slightly used in need of some
love new baby my wife saw this and we're
on vacation in Florida sitting in a
field $5,000 for a car with only about
42,000 miles it seemed like an
incredible deal now it's turned out it's
been in the shop for four months what he
thought was a fixer-upper has now rolled
into a rebuild cars had some odometer
roll back in it it took this a CARFAX
report for him to realize that his car
had more like a hundred and forty two
thousand miles
they was sick due to my stomach there is
a significant rise in the number of cars
that are out there on the road that have
an odometer roll back the problem it's
not just in Denver but it's statewide in
all of Colorado there are thirty four
thousand three hundred and eighty four
cars with suspected fake odometer
readings that's up considerably since
last year Carfax says to federal Heights
brothers got charged in January Adams
County District Attorney Dave young
believes they screwed over 29 people
people unfortunately don't realize that
odometer fraud is on the rise they think
it actually has gone away with the
introduction of the digital odometer and
that's not the case
those odometers can actually be easier
to manipulate easy peasy
Josh Engle legally repairs broken
odometers and he agreed to show us just
how shockingly easy it is to roll one
back sometimes crooks just swap out the
instrument cluster that they get from a
junkyard other times it's more high-tech
this device plugs into your car standard
computer port I want you to watch as we
take nearly 60,000 miles off this car if
you wanted to make this a brand-new car
I can program 20 miles into it
and once I input my value and it'll
reset and now I'm showing 19 miles on
the odometer just a few years ago you
had to buy a device like this which cost
about ten thousand dollars but today
with a Google search you can find this
for three hundred dollars and it does
the exact same thing I get calls weekly
about people trying to you know cheap
the system that everybody plays dumb
everybody you you tell people to no you
can't do that that's illegal
and and most of their response is oh it
is yes that's that's since since the
dawn of cars that's been illegal for the
most part tim has now spent seventeen
thousand dollars on his car and he still
got parts of the brakes to replace
leaving his baby forcibly parked for a
little bit longer
looks like it'll still be here for
another month or two here's something
else to help you out let's say someone
tells you the car only has 40,000 miles
but the steering wheel is significantly
worn or the brake pedals worn that can
be a tip-off that there's an odometer
rollback Jace Larson Denver seven
incredible and you can't get a CARFAX
report from most dealerships for free
and right now if you want to see if the
car parked in your driveway has possibly
been rolled back Carfax is letting you
check their system for free just visit
carfax.com slash oh do you do have to
create a free carfax account the company
will not use that information to market
to you
