some really high tech and sophisticated car thieves are operating near Chicago... not the first time you've heard that, right?

James Owens of Tullahoma, Tennessee unknowingly bought a stolen car for $26,000, from a reputable dealer, and ran a CARFAX report, and other vehicle history checks also failed to reveal the problem; even the National Insurance Crime Bureau’s website didn’t raise any red flags when the suspect VIN was entered

How did that get past the dealership, and CARFAX?

The general manager said that his company had purchased the Challenger at a Manheim auto auction in Chicago.

Manheim bought about $2 million worth of stolen cars, all from one seller. The cars had phony VIN numbers.

The stolen cars had fake titles from the state of Wisconsin, "The FBI guy said this was a high-tech bunch, and they've never had to deal with this before," Owens said.

Owens emailed CARFAX’s consumer affairs department. A CARFAX consumer affairs analyst wrote back to Owen saying “we have no way of knowing that this vehicle was stolen if this was not reported to CARFAX.” The Wisconsin title on the stolen Challenger carried no such warnings; the title itself was bogus, and the car’s VIN number was a fake.

Owens asked CARFAX about its buyback guarantee, which states, “if we miss it, we buy it.”
CARFAX wrote that that only covers “if there is a branded title that was missed by CARFAX.”

A branded title, according to CARFAX’s website, is information added by a state agency to indicate the car has been “significantly compromised in some way,” for example, if the car was flood-damaged or has a salvage title.

https://www.wsmv.com/news/man-buys-stolen-car-with-clean-carfax-report/article_5bead4b8-c833-11e8-b890-174aa22b5c13.html

So, how can you protect yourself? Before you buy it, run it through your insurance company, and check the VIN with the manufacturer. That's how they found that this one was a fake, Mopar's computer wouldn't accept the fake VIN