In the case of vehicle transport, the marketplaces are online “load boards” where car owners, dealerships, and manufacturers post about vehicles that need to be shipped from one location to another. Central Dispatch claims to be the largest vehicle load board and says on its website that thousands of vehicles are posted on its platform each day. It’s part of Cox Automotive, an industry juggernaut that owns major vehicle auctions, Autotrader, Kelley Blue Book, and other businesses that work with auto dealers, lenders, and buyers.
The system worked pretty well until roughly two years ago, when organized fraud rings began compromising broker and carrier accounts and exploiting loopholes in government licensing to steal loads with surprising ease and alarming frequency.
A theft can start with a phishing email that appears to come from a legitimate load board. The recipient, a broker or carrier, clicks a link in the message, which appears to go to the real site—but logging in sends the victim’s username and password to a criminal. The crook logs in as the victim, changes the account’s email and phone number to reroute all communications, and begins claiming loads of high-end vehicles. Cox Automotive declined an interview request but said in a statement that the “load board system still works well” and that “fraud impacts a very small portion” of listings.
“Every time we come up with a security measure to prevent the fraudster, they come up with a countermeasure.”
Bill Woolf, a regional director, National Insurance Crime Bureau
Criminals also gain access to online marketplaces by exploiting a lax regulatory environment. While a valid US Department of Transportation registration is required to access online marketplaces, it’s not hard for bad actors to register sham transport companies and obtain a USDOT number from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, the agency that regulates commercial motor vehicles. In other cases, criminals compromise the FMCSA accounts of legitimate companies and change their phone numbers and email addresses in order to impersonate them and steal loads. (USDOT did not respond to a request for comment.)
As Bek Abdullayev, the founder of Super Dispatch, one of Central Dispatch’s biggest competitors, explained in an episode of the podcast Auto Transport Co-Pilot, “FMCSA [is] authorizing people that are fraudulent companies—people that are not who they say they are.” He added that people can “game the system and … obtain paperwork that makes [them] look like a legitimate company.” For example, vehicle carrier insurance can be obtained quickly—if temporarily—by submitting an online application with fraudulent payment credentials.
The bottom line is that crooks have found myriad ways to present themselves as genuine and permitted vehicle transport brokers and carriers. Once hired to move a vehicle, they often repost the car on a load board using a different fraudulent or compromised account. While this kind of subcontracting, known as “double-brokering,” is sometimes used by companies to save money, it can also be used by criminals to hire an unwitting accomplice to deliver the stolen car to their desired location. “They’re booking cars and then they’re just reposting them and dispatching them out to different routes,” says Yariv, the West Palm Beach transport broker.
“A lot of this is cartel operated,” says Decker, of the Nevada DMV, who also serves on a vehicle fraud committee for the International Association of Chiefs of Police. “There’s so much money in it that it rivals selling drugs.”
Even though this problem is becoming increasingly well known, fraudsters continue to steal, largely with impunity. Brokers, auto industry insiders, and law enforcement told MIT Technology Review that load boards and the USDOT have been too slow to catch and ban bad actors. (In its statement, Cox Automotive said it has been “dedicated to continually enhancing our processes, technology, and education efforts across the industry to fight fraud.”)
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