https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdtx/pr/three-charged-nationwide-scheme-sell-hundreds-thousands-fraudulent-texas-paper-tags

Three people charged with distributing around 600,000 fake paper plates via fake car dealerships. Not surprisingly, working out of Houston.

Good start. I see dozens of paper plates every single day and am fairly confident that at least a couple are illicit at any point in time.

I saw on FB marketplace someone offering these awhile back. Not sure if it was a joke or this guy is just that stupid and doesn't care.

Now to catch the 6375 other scumbags doing this.

Idk if I've just started noticing it more, but there are seriously a **** ton of paper plates in Houston. And they're usually on old ass cars, so it makes me think they're fake.

Only took them 17-years to crack down on this problem.

With the corvids and Trump out of office, the must have not had **** else to do.

Nice work guys.

Just search FB marketplace for placa del vehculo/temporales and you will find a lot more. They're all over the place

We all know that a large portion of paper tags and window registrations are fake.

But there's no profit for law enforcement to do anything about it so they don't.

Glad they're busting this group!

Houston is nothing but paper tags. I hear about it every time family comes down.

Gilligan said:

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We all know that a large portion of paper tags and window registrations are fake.

But there's no profit for law enforcement to do anything about it so they don't.

Glad they're busting this group!

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I bet the State of Texas loses $100 million per year due to fake tags. If you have 200,000 fake tags, that's missing out on $70-75 registration per year. Plus you have the sales tax on the real sales not being paid.

Never understood why Texas DPS officers don't put a stop to this.
Real simple. Tow the vehicle. The tow truck drivers always get paid.

Cromagnum said:

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Good start. I see dozens of paper plates every single day and am fairly confident that ALL are illicit at any point in time.

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Car can't pass inspection so driver gets fake tags / registration and carries no insurance.

But we're surrounded by these cars on the freeways.

I wouldn't even think about letting my family drive or ride in an unsafe vehicle and can afford the $25 inspection fee and $80 registration per vehicle, but you can't squeeze blood from a turnip and these vehicles are everywhere.

20 years ago, Dallas started impounding vehicles pulled over without insurance. However, most of the vehicles belonged to minorities, therefore it was a racist policy. The policy was dropped.

Mas89 said:

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Never understood why Texas DPS officers don't put a stop to this.
Real simple. Tow the vehicle. The tow truck drivers always get paid.

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Because people will complain that it's racist and targeting them.

Gilligan said:

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We all know that a large portion of paper tags and window registrations are fake.

But there's no profit for law enforcement to do anything about it so they don't.

Glad they're busting this group!

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I recently did a police ride along in a pretty big suburb of DFW and asked the officer I was riding with specifically about this issue. Every time we saw a paper plate he ran it and every time it came back good. They were all on old junkier cars and I would have bet money they would come back as fakes but they didn't. I don't know if those little tote a note dealerships are just constantly churning the paper plates or if stimulus/tax returns/Biden bucks are driving pos used cars but the night I did my ride along there was only 1 ticketed instance of approximately 15 officers patrolling.

I was pretty surprised that the vast majority came back clean so if the paper plate industry is running shady ops they're doing a good job of doing it in a way that is difficult to catch.

The tags are valid tags, but most are acquired illegally. They are buying from fake car dealers that set up accounts with the DPS to create the tags.

EMY92 said:

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The tags are valid tags, but most are acquired illegally. They are buying from fake car dealers that set up accounts with the DPS to create the tags.

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That makes sense, the challenge though is if they come back valid when the cops run them it doesn't give them a string to pull to find the groups making/selling them.

It would be real easy for the state to figure out who is doing it. If they are not getting sales tax paid from dealers that are generating a lot of tags, then it's someone selling the tags and only the tags.

Eminus6 said:

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EMY92 said:

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The tags are valid tags, but most are acquired illegally. They are buying from fake car dealers that set up accounts with the DPS to create the tags.

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That makes sense, the challenge though is if they come back valid when the cops run them it doesn't give them a string to pull to find the groups making/selling them.

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Sure it does. It just means the police have to investigate. Something patrol doesn't have the time, money, motivation, or approval from command to do.

If they're running every paper plate they see, and they start seeing patterns of dealers popping up, they need to investigate those dealers. No way a small tote the note dealer is going to have sold 100+ cars in the last 45 days.

LE has enough other issues to deal with that this isn't a priority for them.

txyaloo said:

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Eminus6 said:

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EMY92 said:

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The tags are valid tags, but most are acquired illegally. They are buying from fake car dealers that set up accounts with the DPS to create the tags.

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That makes sense, the challenge though is if they come back valid when the cops run them it doesn't give them a string to pull to find the groups making/selling them.

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Sure it does. It just means the police have to investigate. Something patrol doesn't have the time, money, motivation, or approval from command to do.

If they're running every paper plate they see, and they start seeing patterns of dealers popping up, they need to investigate those dealers. No way a small tote the note dealer is going to have sold 100+ cars in the last 45 days.

LE has enough other issues to deal with that this isn't a priority for them.

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That's the thing though...it doesn't take a law enforcement officer to do the heavy lifting on this. The DA could hire a college intern, give them a laptop and a plate scanner camera and send them out to sit around various well travelled roads and intersections recording plate numbers and then compare them to a database of actual sales based on taxes paid by those dealers. When you see a "dealer" coming up on 100+ separate vehicles in a month, yet they are reporting less than 10 sales, then you send a team out to try to buy a plate from them. Hit them for fraud and for tax evasion by selling the plates without paying the taxes associated with the "sales" that generated the plate. The local DA could fund the intern out of the money they end up spending looking for uninsured motorists, since the two populations probably overlap at >95%.

My mother knows the director of TXDMV. When she told her I was getting a dealers license Monique literally said to not abuse the paper tags because they're starting to crack down on these dealers. I obviously have no intention of doing that but found it interesting she would say that unsolicited. Sounds like it's a big problem.

EMY92 said:

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It would be real easy for the state to figure out who is doing it. If they are not getting sales tax paid from dealers that are generating a lot of tags, then it's someone selling the tags and only the tags.

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They could also check Craigslist/FB Marketplace but again with the investigating that they don't want to do.

Eminus6 said:

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Gilligan said:

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We all know that a large portion of paper tags and window registrations are fake.

But there's no profit for law enforcement to do anything about it so they don't.

Glad they're busting this group!

---

I recently did a police ride along in a pretty big suburb of DFW and asked the officer I was riding with specifically about this issue. Every time we saw a paper plate he ran it and every time it came back good. They were all on old junkier cars and I would have bet money they would come back as fakes but they didn't. I don't know if those little tote a note dealerships are just constantly churning the paper plates or if stimulus/tax returns/Biden bucks are driving pos used cars but the night I did my ride along there was only 1 ticketed instance of approximately 15 officers patrolling.

I was pretty surprised that the vast majority came back clean so if the paper plate industry is running shady ops they're doing a good job of doing it in a way that is difficult to catch.

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Constantly churning the same vehicles is the name of the game. They want to repo within 4 months(all of them have GPS trackers) so they can get that cash down payment, finance fees, and a payment or two again and then repo and start the cycle over. The goal is to 'sell' the same vehicle 3 times a year.