SOVA v Prague Post: Getting more mileage from law

  Turning back the meters on used cars to show less mileage has become increasingly common in the past two years, according to Zbyněk Veselý, president of SOVA. With an amended Criminal Code being drafted right now, the two organizations have decided the time is ripe to push for the addition. "Odometer tampering has become a sort of national sport," said Karolína Topolová, chief operating officer of AAA Auto. Last year, 42 percent of a total of 800,000 cars sold in the Czech Republic had their mileage rolled back, and currently there are nearly 1 million such cars on the road, according to Petra Štumpfová, a spokeswoman for Cebia, a website that provides information about used cars. The practice allows sellers to add an average 20,000 Kč ($1,038) to 30,000 Kč to the selling price, with the total cost to consumers hitting an estimated 6 billion Kč to date. "Customers are suffering great financial losses because they usually find out very soon the car is in much worse condition than what the odometer reading would indicate, and they have to make costly repairs," Veselý said. "If the car is wound down 100,000 kilometers or even more, which is quite common, the price difference might be in the tens of thousands [of crowns]." Their idea of an amendment would inflict varying degrees of punishment, depending on the situation and the amount of damage caused by the fraud, but a basic perpetrator working on their own could get six months to three years in prison. The penalty structure of the amendment is based on existing criminal fraud law, according to an AAA press release. James Ptačinský, a spokesman for the Transport Ministry, said there is currently no legislation regarding odometer fraud, but that falsification of information to obtain benefit, like selling a car for more money, can usually be punished under the current law against fraud. However, he said, the ministry does support an amendment to the penal law that would criminalize odometer tampering, but that there would be technical difficulties in implementing such a law. "The problem is that the actual odometer is not certified, and therefore it is difficult to establish [if it has been tampered with]," Ptačinský said. "Even in countries where such a law exists, there are not many cases of its application." Jiří Hovorka, a spokesman for the Justice Ministry, said that under the existing Criminal Code passed this January, odometer fraud could be prosecuted as a crime of deceit, so no further amendment is necessary, from the ministry's point of view. But Veselý disagrees, saying the existing laws under which odometer fraud can be punished are not good enough. "I think people are winding down odometers because they think it's not illegal. The whole construction with the 'crime of deceit' is too abstract for them," Veselý said. "Once there is a concrete paragraph talking specifically about odometers, I think people would be more scared." The increase in odometer fraud is likely due to a number of factors. Veselý said an increase in people being more aware of the statistics on used cars, which are now widely available online, has prompted car sellers to brush up those numbers by turning back the mileage. In fact, Veselý, said, there are even services listed online that offer mileage reduction services. After the Czech Republic joined the European Union, import rules were relaxed, and in order to compete with the lower prices of used Czech cars, some importers are resorting to odometer fraud, Topolová said. "Odometer tampering is hurting our volume, because currently the demand is stronger than what we have the ability to offer," Topolová said. "We cannot buy out as many cars as we would like to. . We also have to check the cars even more thoroughly, to reveal the odometer fraud, which slows the whole process down." So far, Topolová said the Civic Democratic and Public Affairs parties have stated publicly their intentions to solve the problem, and SOVA said it has met with a number of lawmakers, organizations and companies to discuss the initiative. Štumpfová said that for customers to avoid odometer fraud, they should find all the information they can about a car through websites such as Autotracer that provide car histories by using a car's VIN number, which provides information like a car's production year, odometer history and service records.