2323 Clone Cars

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

This is a CNN piece on the FBI breaking up a car cloning ring. Car theft rings "clone" vehicles by taking license plates and VIN from a legal car and putting them on a stolen vehicle of similar make and model. The article says that the ring has been operating in the US for more than 20 years.

I have some problems with the term "clone". They are disguising the vehicles, not cloning them. Sheesh. I'd even accept "automotive identity theft".

And maybe that particular ring has been operating for "more than 20 years", but the method has been around since long before Dolly the sheep made cloning a household word. It's not a recent innovation.

In 1969 a coworker of mine was briefly arrested for possession of a stolen car. Her car was parked in front of her apartment, and the city police showed up at her door, arrested her, and towed her car away. She was understandably upset. When the police checked the VIN, they let her go, but they kept her car for a few days as "evidence".

It turned out that a car of the exact same make, model, color, and year as her car had been reported stolen, and the plates on her car matched the plates of the stolen car. The police told her that the thieves had switched plates with her car. That gets them a head start getting the stolen car out of the state.

The police kept the bogus plates, and the DMV gave her a load of crap about issuing new plates. They wanted her to turn the old ones in. Duh? Them's the rules, ya know.

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I've been having strange dreams lately.

I'm running out of closet space, and last night I dreamed that I found a fourth bedroom that I didn't know I had, and it was neat and clean, and had about 15 feet of unused closet bars. I woke up this morning all excited about having so much space.

The main problem is that I have no drawers, so a lot of stuff that should be in drawers is instead on hangers. I need me some drawers. Or a real fourth bedroom.

I've had a lot of dreams like that lately. Last week I dreamed that the Hairless Hunk had fixed the van. I was so disappointed when I opened the front door, and the van was still sitting there, rotting into the driveway.

The dreams are so real. I believe them.
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