The legal counsel for the Queensland Office of Fair Trading (OFT), the prosecuting agency, told the court during sentencing that the practice was common.<\/p>\n
According to the OFT, it has conducted 105 odometer-fraud investigations since 2022, leading to 12 prosecutions, nine of which have been successful, and three that are still before the courts.<\/p>\n
In one of the most serious cases, two men are accused of tampering with the odometers of 50 vehicles. The pair will face court in Brisbane next month.<\/p>\n
Multiple states have launched crackdowns on the practice in recent years, with maximum penalties ranging from $50,000 to $200,000.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Alexander Hallett was fined $25,000 for odometer fraud at used-car dealerships he operated. (ABC News: Glenn Mullane)<\/p>\n
The deputy chief executive of the Motor Trades Association (MTA) of Queensland, Kellie Dewar, said dodgy dealers were able to use software to reprogram digital odometers on modern cars.<\/p>\n
“It still is very widespread,” Ms Dewar said.<\/p>\n
“With advances in technology, unfortunately, come advances in people working out how to do the wrong thing.”<\/p>\n
The MTA has created an online portal to report odometer tampering in a bid to weed out repeat offenders.<\/p>\n
In New South Wales and Victoria, buyers can access odometer readings listed on a vehicle’s previous roadworthy inspection reports.<\/p>\n
Spotting the warning signs<\/p>\n
The MTA said the likelihood of identifying odometer fraud increases dramatically with a pre-purchase inspection from a mechanic.<\/p>\n
“There is no use buying the car and then doing a check,” Ms Dewar said.<\/p>\n
While some of the telltale signs can be hard to spot, there are red flags that can be picked up by an untrained eye.<\/p>\n
The MTA recommends checking for excessive wear and tear on the steering wheel, seats, seat belts, gear stick, brake and accelerator pedals.<\/p>\n
“Do a bit of a sanity check to say, ‘Does this match up with the kilometres travelled on the car?'” Ms Dewar said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
NSW Fair Trading officers inspect an imported second-hand vehicle in Sydney. (AAP: Paul Miller)<\/p>\n
She said current punishments were inadequate and people caught winding back the clock should be forced to pay compensation.<\/p>\n
Experts said buyers should also review a used car’s log books and service history, which creates a “paper trail” for odometer readings, and ask questions if those documents were not available.<\/p>\n
Motoring journalist Paul Gover said while tampering was often difficult to prove, if buyers had suspicions, it was better to be safe than sorry.<\/p>\n
“Like everything in life, if it seems to good too be true, it probably is,” he said.<\/p>\n
“If you have got alarm bells ringing, just walk away.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Odometer tampering is “very widespread,” according to the peak body for the automotive sales and service industry, which…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":230995,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[64,63,22536,99,94831,1108,139314,139313,139309,139310,139315,71544,139312,139311],"class_list":["post-230994","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-automotive","tag-business","tag-car-sales","tag-court","tag-kellie-dewar","tag-motor-trades-association-of-queensland","tag-odometer-fraud","tag-odometer-tampering","tag-paul-gover","tag-scams","tag-second-hand-cars","tag-used-cares"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230994","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230994"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230994\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/230995"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}