Musical VINs

[Mike Arman]

> "Tyson Varosyan" <tigran at tigran.com>
> Subject: RE: FS - Grey Market 2.5L TDi Euro Model A4 (in Virginia)
> To: <quattro at audifans.com>
> Message-ID: <000601c9a5ee$24805740$6d8105c0$@com>
> Content-Type: text/plain;	charset="us-ascii"
> 
> That's actually a pretty serious crime... 
> 
> Tyson Varosyan

> Sent: Friday, March 13, 2009 6:13 PM
> Subject: Re: FS - Grey Market 2.5L TDi Euro Model A4 (in Virginia)
> 
> Depending on your state, I've "heard" of people swapping the VIN's
> from another car, and registering it as that. Of course, there are
> legalities associated with that, but that's one way to do it.



Swapping VINs is a big fat no-no.

Two tales of musical VINs:

1) Bike week, Daytona. Bad-ass Harley rider decided that he was going to grind off the VIN on his 
own bike and stamp "**** YOU" as the new VIN. First time he was stopped (about a week after he did 
this), he went right to jail charged with suspicion of motor vehicle theft.

At the trial, it developed that he was in fact the legitimate owner of the vehicle, so they changed 
the charge to "possession of a motor vehicle with altered serial numbers", which is a separate and 
distinct different offense, and is also punishable. You are not permitted to alter the VIN of a 
vehicle even if you do own it.

Where this gets interesting is that Harley went through a frenzy of copyright protection some years 
ago (to the point where they busted a single mother flea market vendor who had made 
"Harley-Davidson" FEATHER ARRANGEMENTS!) and part of this was insisting that if you changed ANYTHING 
on "your" bike it was no long a Harley-Davidson and you had to remove EVERYTHING that identified it 
as such, including the VIN. They've backed off a little since, but not much.


2) Guy I know had a Cherokee 140 in so-so shape and bought a parts plane to swap the good parts from 
the donor plane to his plane. Donor plane arrives at the airport and is in rather better shape than 
the other one. Guy decides to just swap the ID plates, after all, he does own both of them, right? 
FAA catches up with this and it costs him big bucks in legal fees to stay out of prison - he also 
loses all his FAA licenses and certifications (which puts him out of business and grounds him). Ouch.


3) I also know of situations where someone has customized a car or bike and bondo'ed over the VIN on 
the steering neck or frame. They get stopped, officer can't find the VIN, vehicle gets towed away. 
If the owner is lucky and has a good lawyer, they may get to chisel the bondo off to find and reveal 
the VIN. If the owner is not lucky (or has a very bad attitude) he may go to jail just for obscuring 
the VIN on his own vehicle.


Remember - as far as the MVB (and the FAA) are concerned, if it doesn't have a number it doesn't 
exist, so they regard numbers as sacred - (insert deity of choice) help anyone who fools around with 
their VINs!


Best Regards,

Mike Arman

("If you haff noddink to hide, you haff noddink to fear . . . " Josef Goebbels, 1943)