Some more reading on this theft ring.

https://lfpress.com/news/local-news/court-records-shed-light-on-charges-in-3m-auto-theft-bust

I believe the Ford dealership owned them when they were stolen. Grogan Ford has a huge old car collection all of which are for sale
I assume they would have been paid out the insurance?

seventy2plus2 wrote:

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The articles don't really explain how the VIN's don't show up as stolen. Either someone on the inside masked the fact the VIN's were stolen, or the seller changed the VIN's.

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 Makes sense. 

In this day of high tech, AI, big databases, you still have to know who you are buying a vehicle from is legit. Be interesting to see the nitty gritty of how this was done. How did they get a new motor vehicle registration document, even if they changed the VIN? Old cars dont have modern vins which have protocols for number and letter sequences, hard to make vins up out of thin air. In getting work done or ordering parts for a vin vehicle, Ive had parts houses or service centers tell me thats not a good vin when I give them a bad digit. I wonder if a serial number search at a motor vehicle office works on our old non vin vehicles?

 

One interesting thing Ive learned is that Nova Scotia ignored the first digit for the year when registering new vehicles in 1962. The serial number 1st digit, a 2, did not appear on my motor vehicle registration on 3 1962 vehicles I know of/owned. I dont know if that number was missing from the dealer paperwork presented to plate a new car in 1962 or if the motor vehicle office ignored the digit. 

From the new article.

Paul Downs said Grogan only discovered the theft of the vehicles when an employee attended at the MTO office to transfer the ownerships of more than one hundred vehicles from one Grogan corporation to another and discovered that some of the ownerships were not registered in their corporate name, but in other peoples names.

So someone stole a whole bunch of Grogons old vehicles and nobody noticed for 3 years? Wonder who was in charge of keeping these vehicles safe and sound and how many disappeared from his storage? I assume the MTO accepted forged signatures to do these transfers, culpable? Well likely see lawsuits? I hope.