Rigged-Odometer Investigation Has ‘Hit the Jackpot’

The lead investigator in what has been termed the largest recent odometer-tampering scandal in Southern California said Friday that search warrants served last weekend “have hit the jackpot.”

“We have an enormous amount of original documentation,” said Phil Chlopek, an investigator with the state Department of Motor Vehicles.

Chlopek said that some of the seized sales and ownership documents appear to show that original mileage figures for some out-of-state pickup trucks brought into California had been deleted or covered over. New mileage figures appear to have been written in, he said.

In other cases, documents that had been signed under penalty of perjury show nothing in the space where mileage is supposed to be recorded, he said. “It is blank.”

400 Buyers Affected

Hundreds of documents were seized over the Memorial Day weekend in an investigation that officials say defrauded up to 400 consumers out of an estimated $500,000--money they would have saved had the true mileage been posted. The customers bought trucks whose odometers had been rolled back, Chlopek said.

Investigators said the multistate investigation involved a sophisticated ring that purchased late-model, high-mileage trucks in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and other Western states, brought them to California, falsified paper work on them, tampered with the odometers, spruced them up and sold them to 44 dealers, mostly in Southern California.

In one sale cited in the search warrants, a 1985 Ford pickup with 166,985 miles on it showed 48,371 miles on the odometer when it was sold to a Lancaster dealer.

Odometer-tampering is a federal offense with a possible prison term of two years. Chlopek said the investigation, which he conducted with colleague Charlene Arp, will eventually be turned over to the U.S. attorney for prosecution. No indictments have been issued and none are expected for months.

Seized Papers

The investigator said the papers seized during the weekend have opened so many new leads that the investigation may be broadened.

“The initial analysis is that we have hit the jackpot,” Chlopek said.

Another factor that will delay completion of the investigation is that some documents require time-consuming analysis.

In particular, papers that appear to have been falsified will be sent to experts who will “try to remove white-out and black felt-tip pen markings,” Chlopek said. “That will take time.”

The search warrants were served on some organizations that are targets in the investigation, but Chlopek said two businesses whose records were seized are not under suspicion--Elvia Zapien’s VIP Registration Service in Pico Rivera and Auction Express Title Service in Placentia.

“‘VIP and Auction Express have been cooperating,” Chlopek said. “I don’t think they had any criminal involvement in it at all. It is just that they had the records and that is what we needed. At this point in time, they are not suspects.”

“We are cooperating with the DMV,” said Zapien, whose firm expedites and processes vehicle transfer documents. “We have an impeccable reputation. We worked many years to establish that reputation. Any inference that we are involved in an odometer-rigging scheme is absurd and in error.”

Also named in the search warrants were Truck Auto Sales in Ontario, owner C .P. Mercer and his wife, Mattie Aline Mercer, their home in Chino, Mercer’s son, Phillip of Bristow, Okla., and Yiser Dean Dabbs of Fullerton.