Copyright held by The John Cooke Fraud Report. Reprint rights are granted with attribution to The John Cooke Fraud Report with a link to this website.
By Steve Pastis
Changes in the U.S. Customs’ Operation Outlook program, influenced by the National Insurance Crime Bureau, will make it increasingly more difficult for would-be automobile insurance fraud perpetrators to use Mexico to “lose” their vehicles. Operation Outlook, which originally was established to fight narcotics trafficking and money laundering, has been expanded to include evolving efforts against auto theft and auto insurance fraud.
“NICB contacted Customs and requested that we be made a part of this task force,” said David G. Stevenson, Assistant Manager of NICB’s Western Region Auto Theft Division. “We were accepted and invited to participate. What they actually do is physically inspect every vehicle crossing into Mexico by standing on the street at the checkpoint, as far as the vehicle description itself. The vehicle identification number on the dash is inspected, making sure it hasn’t been altered or tampered with or removed, and the documents and paperwork are checked.”
“U.S. Customs reports vehicle information into NICB’s data base where it is coupled with insurance company losses,” said Mark Stoll, Manager of NICB’s Western Region Auto Theft Division. “We progress with insurance fraud investigations from there.”
He explained that U.S. Customs has only started using the NICB’s computer base in the past year. Other recent changes have included placing an agent at the Port of Los Angeles in October 1992 and in Nogales in October 1993. Plans are to assign an agent to the San Diego/Tijuana border area this fall. These and other changes are expected to increase the effectiveness of this long-term cooperative effort.
“NICB’s role in the recovery of stolen vehicles out of Mexico is a project that we’ve been involved in for at least 35 to 40 years,” Stevenson said. “It’s a result of a bi-national treaty that was signed between the United States and Mexico, which provides a certain mechanism for the recovery of stolen cars out of Mexico. NICB is named in this treaty as the official representative of the U.S. insurance industry for the purpose of retrieving stolen property. Consequently, the thousand member companies with NICB rely on us primarily for the recovery of their cars out of Mexico.
“Within this treaty there are certain requirements that we must fulfill in order to recover the stolen property, as far as the documentation that is required. There are different documents that we have to present to authorities in Mexico within a specified time frame, which in this particular case is 45 days. We are tasked with the responsibility of obtaining the documents specified in the treaty and providing those documents to our agents – strategically located along the border – to present these documents to the government authorities in Mexico. They review the documents to make sure they are in order and correct and they issue a release on the vehicle. We at that time cause the vehicle to be recovered and towed back physically to the United States and returned to the insurance company.”
And how many stolen vehicles enter and are recovered in Mexico?
“It’s hard to say how many stolen cars go into Mexico, obviously” Stevenson said. “We can only judge the amount of stolen traffic into Mexico based upon the stolen vehicles we locate there and the vehicles we recover. During 1993, through the efforts of three agents that we have located along the Mexican border, this region (Baja Peninsula extending to Nogales), by itself, identified slightly over 2600 stolen vehicles. Of that 2600 that we located, NICB physically recovered approximately 1000. The difference between that 1000 and the 2600 being those vehicles that would have been insured by an insurance company that was not a member of NICB, or perhaps there was no insurance, or the vehicle was damaged to such an extent that economically it wasn’t feasible or reasonable to bring it back. I have heard estimates which I can’t attribute to – as many as 10,000 stolen vehicles cross into Mexico through the Tijuana-San Diego port of entry.”
Stevenson explained that the NICB channels their Operation Outlook participation in two parts. “We have a two-pronged approach, reactive and proactive. At this time, we have two agents working with U.S. Customs who are assigned to attempt to interdict these vehicles from going into Mexico. Then we have two agents working the reactive role to recover the vehicles and bring them back.”
Special Agents Augie Huerta, assigned to Nogales, Sonora, Mexico, and Senior Special Agent Randy Garcia, of San Diego, facilitate the recovery of stolen vehicles once they are in Mexico, presenting the necessary documentation to Mexican authorities. Both praised the cooperation of Mexican officials.
“We’re in the process now of interviewing applicants to fill a third position which will fill that area between San Diego and Yuma, Arizona,” Stevenson said, adding that NICB’s Dallas office is responsible for the Texas/Mexico border.
The main goal of NICB’s participation in Operation Outlook is to recover the vehicles which are reported lost or stolen to NICB’s member insurance companies. Some of the cars are involved in insurance fraud, according to Stevenson, although “the vast percentage are not. However, there is a small portion of those vehicles that we locate in Mexico that will cause us later to investigate for insurance fraud.”
“We’re working a case right now where an individual had a car shipped to a Central American country,” Stoll said. “We have a rapport with the Central American authorities. We’re now working a case off of that. Our data base is international in scope.”
Steve Pastis is the managing general editor of The John Cooke Fraud Report.
© Copyright 1994 Alikim Media