The secondary car market in Russia is growing at a tremendous pace; As of the end of January-September this year, more than 5 million second-hand cars were sold; This is 27% higher than the same period last year. High demand and new sales channels, such as parallel imports and “gray” imports, attract the attention of a large number of scammers and fraudsters who want to profit from transactions with cars.
Prepayment and counterfeit
The most common fraud scheme involves making a down payment on a car. Car selection expert and author of the YouTube channel AvtoRevizorro Kirill Chernov says that when they offer to bring a car for order and under various excuses pay the money in full or make a deposit of 5-10%.
“Such scammers have very well-developed social engineering; They work using special scripts and protocols. So they know how to deceive other people. It is very difficult to protect yourself from this, you need to delve deeply into the parallel import process, understand its mechanisms, know the necessary documents, because everything is done remotely,” Chernov warns in a conversation with a socialbites.ca correspondent.
According to the interlocutor, lately scammers often pose as well-known companies, dealers and popular bloggers. Buyers are presented with a legally valid contract and details that people trust. If the customer has already made an advance payment, scammers try to make even more money by offering loans, installment plans and discounts. Of course, the customer will not be able to buy any car after completing these contracts.
“It is worth noting that loans, discounts and installment payments are not possible for cars brought to order through parallel imports.
This is one of the first signs of fraud as the vehicles are physically located in another country. “They do not have Russian documents, so no bank will give a loan,” says the expert.
Broken and “twisted”
According to the author of the AvtoRevizorro channel, the vast majority of cars imported from Europe have low mileage, and cars delivered from the USA, as a rule, were purchased at auctions of insurance companies and are not suitable for use after an accident (this means “complete damage” ” they took). Dealers are trying to hide these facts.
In Europe, the price difference between a low mileage car and a high mileage car can be twice as much. In this case, there will be no difference in technical condition and appearance. It is very easy to pass a car with 200 thousand km of mileage from the EU as a car with 50 thousand km of mileage. It is very easy to check a car from the USA by its VIN number online and make sure it is damaged.
The most striking example of cheating with mileage distortion in Chernov’s practice is associated with the Mercedes-Benz E-Klasse. A dealer from Krasnodar brought a car with a mileage of 600 thousand km and reduced the odometer reading to 100 thousand km. It later turned out that this car had previously worked in a taxi service in Stockholm.
Another case involves a Volkswagen Touran compact van whose mileage was changed twice, an auto expert says. This car was first sold at an auction in Denmark with a mileage of 350 thousand kilometers, then brought to Belarus and sold with a mileage of 200 thousand kilometers. Later, Moscow dealers increased the readings to 100 thousand km.
It turned out that this Volkswagen was previously in the fleet of the Danish police. The car had a hidden hole in the roof for a search light.
It is quite easy to find out the history of cars from the USA, South Korea, France and Scandinavia using VIN numbers through online search engines. On cars from Germany, this procedure is more complicated.
“Hybrid Japanese cars on the secondary market are quite popular here, but in Europe they work mostly in taxis and are rarely found among ordinary citizens. So if you see a hybrid Japanese car imported from Europe, 99% of it worked in taxi. Unfortunately, Japanese cars eat up their miles without a trace, just like Korean and French cars. “For some German systems, it is difficult to completely delete data from all systems,” warns the expert.
With fake documents
Most of the cars are imported from the USA, Germany, South Korea, Japan and the UAE. Dmitry Rogov, founder of the RogovMobil company (specializing in turnkey car delivery from abroad), notes that to save on customs fees, dealers send cars through Belarus and Kyrgyzstan using the rules of the Customs Union of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU). According to him, cars also pass through many hands on their way to Russia and pass through customs to unknown persons, which also increases the transparency of transactions.
“Instances of incorrect registration of customs documents are common. Now many documents have a simplified form, electronic databases are used. Naturally, no one will check the declaration using an electronic database. Later it turned out that the car was imported with the most underestimated invoice (invoice from the exporter to the buyer in the Russian Federation – socialbites.ca). Hiding the fact that in the future the vehicle owner will receive an invoice to pay taxes or recycling fees,
In an interview with socialbites.ca, Rogov notes that these copies of the quote can be forged, and this is done very simply and people do not double-check the documents.
According to him, there is now a risk of purchasing a car with incorrect documents and invoices, even from an official dealer. He pointed out that it is impossible to track at what stage of delivery of the car to the Russian Federation incorrect data was entered into the documents.
“We recently spoke with a person who bought a car from a dealer and was looking for ways to restore the customs passenger declaration, one of the documents under which the car was registered. The dealer misplaced the statement and is no longer returning calls. “The vehicle owner does not know which customs office he should apply to restore the document and therefore cannot register the vehicle,” he said.
With replacement VIN numbers
The use of VIN numbers in advertising is no less common in the secondary market, says automobile expert Yaroslav Boyko. Dealers search for a car with a similar description using special services and use its number when posting an ad on the Internet.
“You also need to pay attention to the prices stated by official dealers in classified ads. As a rule, these prices are discounted by 15% from the actual prices and are only valid if the vehicle is purchased on credit.
“I once came across a car at a ‘gray’ dealership with a replacement VIN number that had actually been ‘completely’ restored after an accident,” he says.
“Gray” dealers can also use another trick, trying to sell another car under the guise of what they want. Therefore, before inspecting the car, they insist on applying for a loan, claiming that the car is on the bank’s territory, but in fact there is no such thing, he explains. Finally, Boyko added that among old Japanese cars on the secondary market, you can find many “doubles” with changed numbers and fake sets of documents that copy the data of a legally registered car.