Houston Automobile Dealers Association

6 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 9, ISSUE 4 BVM: What other aspects are involved in the Dealer Alert initiative? Schlosser: “The second part of our initiative was to train the dealerships on how to spot and identify fraud. There are several aspects of fraud that even seasoned veterans within the dealership community who do finance every day aren’t aware of – such as synthetic identity. I’ve trained over 2,200 dealership employees on how to spot and identify fraudulent information. So now we have an advocate on our side that is actually trained to look for these details. “The real sweet spot is to catch a crook in the act and that’s the third part of our initiative. So we’ve created a program that’s being taken as a model across the nation for what we call “fraud in progress.” Basically, it means that when a dealership has a suspicion that something’s not right with an ID or the finance process, they have an outlet to contact us. If we determine that it’s fraud, we send patrol officers to the location and while they’re on the way, the dealership has the suspect sign a credit application, which locks in the fraudulent name they’re using on that purchase. Then we have them sign a purchase order that locks in how much they’re trying to steal. In conjunction with the fake ID they presented, it usually leads to two felony charges. Now patrol comes in and arrests them and we know who the actual suspect is that’s presenting the fraudulent information. “It’s more than just dealer alerts, we have a network of fraud investigators, so we can share information and everybody’s up to date on what’s happening in the fraud world, because it changes all the time. It’s estimated that there was $7.5 billion worth of vehicle fraud in the U.S. in 2021 alone – it’s a huge business that’s almost always related to organized crime. If we could set up a system similar to ours in metroplexes across the country, I believe that once you get the partnership between the dealerships and law enforcement to come together to battle this, HOUSTON AUTOMOB I LE DEALERS ASSOC I AT ION