HELP! I THINK I'M A VICTIM OF MILEAGE FRAUD!

Bought my used 2018 TRD Sport on 10/28/19. Had inspection done on 11/8/19. The odometer read 34200 miles.
Under the "OBD Additional data" it says "miles since code clearing", it says 54253 miles since it was cleared. I think I've been screwed.
Anyone have any input? There's a copy of my inspection below. This leads me to believe the odometer was rolled back, but the true mileage is
being stored somewhere else other than the cluster. How else would the 54253 miles show up?

By the way, I bought this Truck at a reputable Lexus dealership.

 

Really interesting.
Did you purchase from a dealer or private party?

 

Yeah, that does look suspicious. Did you buy it at a dealer or private sale? And where was the inspection done? Did whoever did the inspection point out the discrepancy? I’d guess your next step is the DMV or State Police, I’d hold off on contacting the seller until you’re sure there is a problem and one of the two agencies has directed you to proceed.

 

I think that is the miles since any emissions fault codes were cleared. Since it’s more than your mileage I would guess they’ve never needed clearing. It should be easy to track your mileage through a car fax report.

Also, it’s quite a bit of work to replace the instrument cluster. I doubt anyone is doing it to rollback the mileage by 20k. Just seems like a waste of effort.

 

And yes it was a dealership. Lexus Dealership. Already contacted the the salesman on Friday.
He said he would call me at ten on Monday after he speaks with their techs.

 

I would guess that the codes have never been cleared and that 54k is just whatever random data that spot in memory had in it the first time the computer booted. Lazy coding can cause that.

Curious to see what the dealer says.

 

Yea. That’s kinda what I was thinking. You can’t really put 0 miles as a place holder because that would be confusing for diagnosing problems. Any other number leads to this situation. Maybe 999,999 would work.

 

From some research I've done, It doesn't seem too difficult to roll back the odometer with the right device.
The records I got with the truck have receipts from original purchase Starting with Vehicle inspection on 4/19/2018.
(which said there was 10 miles on the odometer.) And the "OBD Additional Data" Miles since code clearing was 9 miles ago.Something's fishy here.
Up til March 28, 2019. And the mileage was at 23387 at this point. And there were no other receipts after that date.
Also I checked the engine air filter yesterday. It is filthy. Should have been changed at 30k miles. When I took possession
of the truck it had 33618 miles on the odometer. So there are 7 months with no info on the truck during that time period.

 

Not sure if this would help but go to another Toyota dealer and get them to run the vin. It could show the service history of the truck if it was serviced at Toyota.

 

You might consider calling one of the MA emissions/inspection stations tomorrow and see what they think. Obviously there shouldn’t be 50-some thousand miles on the truck since any event whatsoever, unless we’re misunderstanding the meaning of that field somehow.

 

It sounds to me like you are looking for something to prove your theory.

If the truck had 24,000 miles in March it sounds normal for the truck to have 34,000 miles on it. That's only 10,000 miles in 8-9 months. If the number was 54,000 that would mean that the truck was driven 30,000 miles in the same time, that seems a bit extreme.

If the discrepancy bothers you, contact the agency that performed the inspection and ask them why the numbers are off. After all, that is what you are basing your concern on.

 

I don’t know the answer but hope it’s just the inspector not resetting the machine or something simple. Good news is you (we) live in MA. You have every law and organization on your side, from the trade organizations to the AGs office. Let the dealers service manager do their thing in case it is a test mistake but please post a follow up as this is not a problem I’ve seen much. I’ve found in life most things are the simple answer first and if “pressing reset” is one step on the new MA systems it may be an inexperienced operator just needs more practice. If it turns out to be malicious or fraud, we all want to know who and how.

 

It was owned by one person. This person works for NOAA. And traveled up and down the east coast for their job constantly.
You can find out a lot about high profile people on line. By the way, I'm not trying to prove any theory. It's in black and white that
the first inspection by the previous owner says there was 10 miles on the odometer and the last time the codes were cleared was at 1 mile.
When I had it inspected there was 33618 miles on the odometer and miles since code clearing is 54253 miles. Not looking to prove any theory.
Its documented in the computer. We'll see what the dealer says tomorrow.

I will keep everyone posted.

 

I have my cluster replaced. In Texas at least. The dealer can not touch the mileage. When the new cluster is ordered it comes in and is actually sent to a facility the is certified by the state to set the mileage in the new cluster to be installed. The dealer is not allowed to do it, hopefully they didn’t mess with it, they can get a mess load of trouble. Good luck and keep us posted.

 

Welcome to TW... Hope you get it figured out!!

 

Didn't your dealer provide the carfax? Either online or in person.

 

Yes I did receive a carfax report. And there were no reported issues.
That doesn't change the fact that after inspection the numbers are wrong according to the inspection station.



The Mileage since the last code reset is correct.
The Problem?
They used Kilometers instead of miles.
It was a glitch in their software. And there was no indication
whether it was in miles or kilometers. The dealer was very
concerned about the discrepancy too. Until they found out it
was a software problem.
It's all good.........

 

Dirty air filters aren’t uncommon after a 30k service. Most of the time they’re not actually replaced.

Good luck, but don’t get paranoid over something that might be explainable tomorrow. You’ll convince yourself of whatever theory and be unwilling to consider you may be misunderstanding something.

 

I am going to answer this with a common sense question approach. Please raise your hand if you would be willing to go to jail or pay a substantial fine for odometer fraud over 20,000 miles. Anyone??? Didn't think so. What would be the motive? No profit to be made worth doing it. The actual miles are stored in the computer somewhere and not restable, at least on other vehicles i have worked on. The dealer should be ableto pull the actual miles in a couple of minutes.

 

reminds me of why I always buy brand new
interesting stuff though