This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with The Connecticut Mirror. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.
Reporting Highlights
- Cars for Cutting in Line: For years, a towing company got to cut the line at the DMV in exchange for selling towed cars at deep discounts, according to an internal DMV report.
- Range of Abuses: Investigators said the company drastically undervalued cars and avoided returning money to car owners or the state, showing the DMV’s lack of oversight.
- Few Consequences: Though the report said a DMV employee was reselling cars for profit, the agency took no action against the employee or the towing company. The employee still works there.
These highlights were written by the reporters and editors who worked on this story.
The silver Jeep Wrangler that showed up at the Connecticut Department of Motor Vehicles inspection station was missing all four of its wheels. Gone, too, were its doors.
“Vehicle is absolutely stripped,” the Connecticut towing company wrote to the state DMV. That was why it was only worth $1,000, the company said on an official form that took advantage of a state law allowing it to sell vehicles it had towed.
Photos submitted by the tow truck company showed the Jeep covered in fresh snow, but strangely, despite it having no doors, there was no snow inside the vehicle, suggesting the doors had recently been removed. The company also failed to mention that when it towed the stolen Jeep after a police stop three weeks earlier, it had stylish rims on its still-attached wheels and an LED light bar above the windshield, and the police wrote that the vehicle had “no visible damage.”
The DMV approved the request to sell the vehicle, and a few months later, the Jeep was posted for sale — not by the tow truck company but on the Facebook page of a longtime DMV employee. The Jeep now had rims, wheels and a light bar like it had when police stopped it.
The DMV employee sold the Jeep to a used car dealer for $13,500. After passing through several more hands, another dealership ultimately sold it to a customer for $28,781.44.
The Connecticut Mirror and ProPublica in January exposed how Connecticut’s laws favor towing companies at the expense of drivers. The state allows tow companies to seek the DMV’s permission to sell some vehicles after 15 days — one of the shortest such windows in the country. The system has resulted in a wide range of abuses with little oversight from the DMV.
The case of the Jeep with the missing wheels, laid out in internal DMV records, is an extreme example of how the DMV has failed to monitor a process that has had severe consequences for some car owners with low incomes. CT Mirror and ProPublica have spoken to dozens of people who had their cars towed and never saw them again. Many said they were never notified that their car would be sold.
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