[lucky]

I find this claim by Jeff Ostroff (carbuyingtips.com) a bit alarming:

The NHTSA reports that over 450,000 vehicles per year are sold with false odometer readings - Many more are unreported!

The National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) estimates that Hurricane Katrina alone damaged as many as 571,000 cars!

If you are buying a used car, you absolutely must get an AutoCheck Vehicle History Report on the Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) AND have a certified mechanic inspect the car on a lift. If you do not do both of these, do not buy that used car! You have been warned.

Gee, isn't that scary? Can you imagine getting a fabulous-looking car, only to find out later that it was one of those that drowned during the Hurricane Katrina and that its odometer was carefully tampered? That looks possible if we're not careful.

[Jess28]

Holy cow that is scary! I heard about this before when I was younger (people flipping the odometers so it looked like the vehicles had less miles). You really have to be super careful when purchasing any used vehicle these days!

[Byker]

That is pretty scary. I thought odometer flipping was something of the past because the government clamped down on it, but I guess swindlers will still do anything to sell cars.

[lucky]

Frankly I have no idea how they do it. Odometers are supposed to be tamper-proof. It is also illegal to force yourself through it.

I saw a movie wherein a shrewd used car salesman used an electric drill to turn the flexible shaft connected to the odometer the other way so that readings would go down. My understanding is, that was not possible in reality. But then I was not completely sure.

[jason]

I sold one of my cars once. I told the person it had a new engine which was sold to me with x amount of miles, and that the odometer was different then the miles on the odometer. I made sure to mention this several times, and every time they acted surprised.

[Buyer]

I do find this kind of thing worrying. Unfortunately I'm not very fine tuned to trying to spot a con, and I know that it means that at some point in time I'm going to get ripped off.