‘Some states are seeing an increase in fraudulent odometer rollbacks on used cars’

General Discussion
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‘The Wisconsin DOT says last year, nearly 6,000 vehicles in the state showed signs of odometer rollback, more than three times the year before. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates nationally 450,000 vehicles are sold each year with false odometer readings. The data firm Carfax says, based on its computer analysis of car repair and oil change data and vehicle title transfers, it suspects 2 million cars on U.S. roads have rolled-back odometers, an 18% increase over the last four years. Maura Schifalacqua with the Wisconsin DOT says one of the main causes for the increase is that the rolling back of digital odometers found on modern vehicles is pretty easy. She sits in the driver's seat of a car and feels for what's called the OBD, or onboard diagnostics port, usually used for legit purposes by mechanics.’
https://www.npr.org/2025/06/09/nx-s1-5418046/some-states-are-seeing-an-increase-in-fraudulent-odometer-rollbacks-on-used-cars
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I’d have to look at the title but in Minnesota when you sell a car, you record the mileage on the title. If you don’t know or the odometer has been replaced, you can state that on the title. So it would be pretty hard for the buyer to not be aware of the reported mileage.

Not sure what happens when they get laundered through a dealer. I haven’t bought a used car in over ten years. Maybe someone knows but seems like a fairly reliable system.

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In NH and MA the dealer must present the OD reading (signed paper from both parties) when the dealer bought the vehicle.

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Buy your own OBD2 reader and check 2 places… the instrument cluster and the ECU. They should match. If they don’t, maybe there was a rollback.

I replaced a cluster on my 2013 Mustang with one from a 2014 to get the Track Pack cluster. I found a guy somewhat local (Ft Lauderdale) who reset my cluster’s mileage to match the ECU. It was not a perfect match… but it was within a 1 mile. I could see a difference in my OBD2 tool.

But then I needed the ECU replaced. That mileage from the instrument cluster was now downloaded to my new ECU and they matched exactly when I sold the car. I was not trying to do anything nefarious but I can see how you could.

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I’m curious what the cat-n-mouse game over the years has been between vehicle manufacturers and makers of aftermarket rollback devices.

I know 30+ years ago carmakers took an interest in smart flash memory that detected if numbers were decremented or incremented at rates above a certain threshold.

I know at a minimum, the mileage is stored in more than one place in today’s cars. I’m curious what else carmakers have tried over the years to stay ahead of the aftermarket cheats.

Does anyone here have an insight?

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Beyond the warranty period, I don’t see why they would care unless there are federally mandated mechanisms to prevent it. The old mechanical odos had the wheels to scrape lines in the numbers if they went backwards or were disassembled. With the advent of digital odos, the only way is to have proprietary software and/or multiple locations to store the mileage. But, they need to support R&R in the field so there needs to be some way to set the odometer on the replacement cluster (or other storage locations). This invariably allows for nefarious usage of these tools. Personally, if they just made any changed part read zero to start, that might be better than providing a means to change it…

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Mechanic shows us how easy it is to change odometer

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Good reason to buy new, if you can afford it

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I had touched on this topic and how it really effected older vehicles that had an alarming percentage of vehicles with rolled back odometers, complete with several realistic scenarios and was told rollbacks didn’t happen as often as I said despite providing irrefutable proof!.

So dont worry about it, its a non existent problem! If odometer rollbacks didn’t happen much back when it was extremely easy to bust miles then it reall doesn’t happen much at all now being the difficulty involved.

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There was a time when they would just roll all the odometers back to zero on used cars. Maybe they still do or maybe not now with the computer systems. At least then you had to evaluate a car on Condition instead of mileage.

I have a little sympathy after usually having high mileage cars in great shape with highway miles. Impossible to sell when you tell them 350,000 miles, and I considered that low mileage compared to 400 or 500k.

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Rick you clearly said 50-75% of vehicles had been rolled back, no one said it didn’t happen, just not at the rate you said it did…