Christine Hempsted thought she was just doing another round of routine paperwork. Logging into the Orange County tax collector’s site in Florida, she renewed her family’s vehicles like she had every year since 2018. But when she clicked on the 2019 blue Toyota Tacoma her family drives daily, the usual renewal button was gone. She figured maybe she’d done a two-year registration by mistake. She hadn’t.
What she discovered instead was that, at least on paper, her truck no longer belonged to them
State records showed the Tacoma had been “transferred” in March. Someone, a stranger, had registered it hundreds of miles away in Massachusetts. Complete with the same make, model, color, and even VIN.
Hempsted still had the truck in her driveway the entire time. But Florida wouldn’t let her renew a registration that, according to the system, didn’t exist anymore.
It took weeks of calls and confusion before anyone figured out what had happened: someone had cloned the Tacoma
Vehicle cloning is essentially automotive identity theft.
Criminals steal a car, then swipe the VIN from a legally registered vehicle of the same type. They tamper with the stolen car’s VIN plate to match, creating a fake twin…