Sent: Tuesday, October 27, 2009 9:52 AM
Subject: Re: car theft
I had a vehicle stolen from me and the title was in the vehicle signed and notarized as i was in the process of selling the vehicle, the mvd records state that the vehicle is still in my name but under the circumstances i don’t know what my options are as far as recovering the vehicle because it does in fact have an open title that can easily be put into someone else’s name, please advise and thank you very much.
Our Reply:
As long as you made a stolen vehicle report with the police you should be fine. If someone tries to register a car in their name that has been reported stolen, the car will show up in DMV records as stolen and the police will be called. If you told the police the signed title was in the car, hopefully they listed it in the police report. If not, and if the car has not been recovered yet, you should call the police back and see if they can supplement that information to the stolen vehicle report. That way if an officer recovers the vehicle and the driver says it’s his car because he has a signed title, the officer can read the original report and see that the title was in the car when it was stolen.
As long as you made a stolen vehicle report with the police, no one will be able to register the car until the police are notified and they remove the car from the stolen vehicle system. When the car is found you shouldn’t have any problem getting it back since you will still be listed as the owner.
More importantly; Never leave anything of value in a car including the title to the car, especially a signed one. If someone was able to go to the DMV to register it in their name before you reported it as stolen, it would create a real mess for the police to sort out.
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