During the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles Board meeting on April 14, members announced they have continued to crack down on illegal paper tags sold by car dealers. Since January, thirty dealerships have been cut off from printing temporary tags after the DMV determined they were selling fraudulent tags for profit.
The acting executive director for the TxDMV, Daniel Avitia, said, “The efforts are working and we are constantly removing access to the system as I mentioned and this is a daily operation.”
The DMV first started the crackdown on illegal temporary tags a few months ago when NBC 5 Investigates released reports that highlighted the issue.
DMV Board Chairman Charles Bacarisse said that while cutting off these dealerships is a big step toward stopping this kind of activity, there is still more work to be done. According to Bacarisse, the criminals who sell these tags can quickly adapt to exploit gaps in the DMV security system.
“All of these actions are good,” he said. “But we’re not done — far from it.”
The next step, according to Bacarisse, will be for the DMV to implement fingerprinting for car dealers. If enforced, fingerprinting would better secure the system from criminals.
Bacarisse told NBC 5 a plan could be approved in June but may take longer to implement.
“I think there’s a challenge with anything that large getting rolled out,” he said. “I think we could do it fairly, reasonably quickly. … It’s definitely going to take some time. I don’t have a firm grasp on how much or how quickly.”
Initial reports from NBC 5 Investigates stated a lack of fingerprinting was allowing criminals to access the DMV system to obtain dealership licenses. Illegal dealerships can then sell fraudulent paper tags for a significant profit.
“The implementation of fingerprinting dealers during the initial application process and part of the license renewal is our best opportunity to ensure that bad actors do not gain access,” Avita said during the April 14 meeting.
Some police officers who spoke with NBC were frustrated with the DMV’s lack of a timeline for implementing this new process.
A Central Texas sheriff’s deputy, David Kohler, told NBC, “I think they are on track, I just wish it would speed up a little bit more.”
Kohler investigates illegal tags in Texas and said adding fingerprinting verification would be the best way to stop them.
“You have to know who you are giving access to your system, and if you don’t know who they are and they have a criminal background, you are done,” he said.
While things are slow-moving, Kohler told NBC it feels like the DMV is listening to law enforcement.
“The board is understanding and recognizing the problem and I think with just the continued media coverage, the exposure, the attention, it’s just light years away from where it was,” he said.
Police officers would also like to see in-person inspections implemented for each licensed car dealership, though no timeline has been provided as to when that could happen.
