Obscured Vehicle Identities – An Analog Deep Fake

As the news continues to churn stories about AI, analog vendors have been quietly helping vehicle owners obscure their vehicles’ identities. In claims liability, the ability to trace a vehicle to its owner is incredibly important, and it is getting harder to do that.

Enter the Flea Market

These are actual photos taken at a large flea market in Michigan last weekend (one table of four!) — note that these are current plate designs. In our work at Fraud Sniffr we are often asked to trace vehicles that have been in accidents, only to find more and more often that these flea market plates. We know it is also possible to purchase license plates on the Web.

There is a growing trend toward fake plates in lower income swaths of the population who either do not want to pay to register their vehicles, or are trying to evade speed cameras and toll booth fees. In some instances, we will see a VIN with an associated license plate, but the plate on the vehicle itself is a flea market fake!

It is possible to trace vehicles with fake plates by tapping into photo databases that show where the license plate has been spotted around town and across the country. We have been using these databases when state databases do not have a record for the license plate captured in an accident report.

As vehicle owners grow increasingly distrustful of state authority and state laws, they also become more confident in their ability to keep themselves out of state databases by deep faking their license plates.

If you are having trouble getting license plate results, contact us and we’ll put these photo resources to work for you. https://www.fraudsniffr.com