A guy I know got stopped by the police yesterday and arrested because he was driving a car that was reported stolen. He bought it off of the Facebook Marketplace. Apparently, the person he bought it from forged the title. And the DMV didn’t catch it when he went to register it.
I did some searching and wasn’t able to find a place where you can get the owner information for free by the VIN. But I did find a place where you can, supposedly, check if the car you’re buying was reported stolen: https://www.nicb.org/vincheck
There doesn’t seem to be a good way to check the validity of the title, if you’re a private individual. The only info I could find is lame-shit like “check to see the quality of the paper and printing, check for watermarks and stamps”, etc. It’s not hard to use good quality paper for a forgery or to print w/ a decent printer. And how is a private individual supposed to know what to look for in a stamp or a watermark?
You’d think in 2024 there would be mandatory digital loockups at the DMV to transfer the title and register the vehicle? Guess you’d be wrong.
So, be careful buying cars from people. Run this VIN-check at the very least. Also, you might be able to ask the DMV person to do run a check on the VIN to see who the owner is.