---
title: "Odometer Check by VIN: What the Federal Record Actually Holds"
description: "A federal odometer check returns one reading and a status code, not a history. The nine NMVTIS odometer codes, why five of them collapse into one brand, and where the real check happens."
url: "https://baronauto1.com/vehicle-history/odometer-check-by-vin/"
type: "article"
published: "2026-09-06"
modified: "2026-09-06"
site: "Baron Auto"
disclaimer: "This site is under new ownership and is not affiliated with Baron Auto Emporium dealership."
---

# Odometer Check by VIN: What the Federal Record Actually Holds

> A federal odometer check returns one reading and a status code, not a history. The nine NMVTIS odometer codes, why five of them collapse into one brand, and where the real check happens.

*VIN & Vehicle History · 25 min read · 5,596 words*

## The short version

- An odometer check by VIN returns one federal thing: the mileage disclosure recorded on the day a state issued the title, plus any later reading that state chose to note. It is a value, not a graph.
- Three sectors are compelled by federal law to feed the national title record, and only one of them — the state titling agency — ever reports a mileage figure at all. Insurers and salvage yards report five data elements each, and no odometer reading appears in either list.
- The federal system carries nine odometer codes: 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 76 and 77. They are not interchangeable. One says the reading is true, one says it is exempt, and the rest describe different ways of being wrong.
- Texas publishes both halves of its conversion table, and reading them together shows the loss: five of those nine codes come out of the state system as the single brand NOT ACTUAL MILEAGE, and only two odometer codes are ever sent back.
- The check that actually catches a rollback runs at a titling counter, not on your laptop. A state comparing a lower reading against the one already on file raises a specific error, and if nobody can explain it, the record gets branded.
- An odometer brand does not expire when the disclosure duty does. Texas found 434 vehicles in one year that had been reported as exempt from odometer disclosure and applied the not-actual brand to them anyway.
- Odometer work is a large share of the federal brand file, not a footnote: two of the seven most common brand types nationally are odometer brands, at 6% and 5% of everything reported through 30 September 2024.
- A clean result is weaker than it reads. States must run the comparison, but nothing in the rule requires a state to act on what it finds.

People searching for an odometer check by VIN have usually already done the arithmetic in their head. A car of a certain age is showing a number that does not fit its age, and they want to know whether anything independent of the seller can be set against that number. The answer is yes, and the shape of the answer matters more than most guidance admits.

There is a federal odometer record. It is keyed to the VIN, it is fed under legal compulsion rather than by commercial agreement, and it holds a specific, narrow, checkable set of facts about mileage. It is also much smaller than the phrase “odometer history” suggests, and the way it is built explains both what it catches and what it lets through.

This page is about that record: what it holds, which codes it uses, who is obliged to feed it, where the mileage figure comes from and where it stops. Our separate page on [mileage checks by VIN](https://baronauto1.com/vehicle-history/mileage-check-by-vin/) covers the commercial timeline — readings gathered from service visits, inspections and auctions — and the physical checks you can run standing next to the car. The two pages answer different halves of the same worry, and this half is the one written into regulation.

## What the federal record actually hands back

The National Motor Vehicle Title Information System is the federal title record, run by the Department of Justice. The rule that governs it lists five things the system must let a user establish instantly and reliably, and one of them is the odometer.

The wording repays reading slowly, because it contains its own limits. Under 25.53 the system must return, for an automobile known to be titled in a particular state, the odometer mileage disclosure required by the federal odometer statute for that automobile on the date the certificate of title was issued, and any later mileage information, if noted by the state.

Take that apart and there are four separate conditions in a single sentence. The car has to be known to be titled somewhere. The reading is the one from the disclosure, not from a workshop or an inspection lane. It is fixed to the date the title was issued, which is a paperwork date rather than a driving date. And everything after that first reading is optional — it appears only if the state noted it.

The Department’s own consumer material says the same thing in plainer language. Its list of what a report contains reads “latest odometer data”, singular. Its consumer disclaimer describes what is included as the most recent odometer reading in the state’s title record. Not readings. Not a history. The most recent one that state holds.

**The practical consequence.** The federal odometer check is a point, not a line. It tells you what the last titling state wrote down and what status it attached to that figure. Everything a buyer imagines when they picture an odometer history — a dated sequence with a visible kink in it — is either a commercial product built from other sources or it is the state’s own title file, which you request from the state rather than from the national system.

That is not a criticism of the system. It is the system doing what the statute told it to do, which is to make title fraud harder rather than to compile a service log. But it does mean that a buyer who pays for the federal record expecting a graph will be disappointed, and a buyer who reads the single value carefully will get something the graph cannot give them: a status code attached to the number, applied by a titling authority, that travels with the car.

**Figure: Nine odometer codes arrive; two leave**

A five-step figure following an odometer status code into a state title system and back out to the national record, marking the step at which the original finding stops travelling with the vehicle.

Read a code table down the middle and the nine codes are doing genuinely different jobs; read it down the right-hand column and five of them stop being distinguishable. So a result saying not actual mileage is not the original finding — it is whatever survived the last state’s conversion, and what sits underneath may be considerably worse than the label. Source: the TxDMV NMVTIS Guide of October 2023, which publishes both halves of the mapping.

## Only one of three reporting streams carries a mileage figure

Three sectors are required by federal law to report into the national record, and it is worth knowing which of them ever mentions mileage, because the answer is: one.

State titling agencies report under 25.54. They must supply titling information at least once every 24 hours, and the list of what they must include runs to five items: the VIN, any description on the certificate of title including all brands, the name of the party the certificate was issued to, junk and salvage acquisition information where the state collects it, and — for a car known to be titled in that state — the odometer mileage disclosure on the date the title was issued, plus any later mileage information the state noted. That last item is the entire federal odometer supply.

Insurance carriers report under 25.55. They file monthly, covering the current model year and the four prior model years, on every vehicle they took possession of and decided was junk or salvage. The rule then lists exactly what the inventory must contain: the carrier’s identity and contact information, the VIN, the date the vehicle was obtained or designated, the name of whoever possessed it at that point, and the name of the owner at the time of filing. Five elements. None of them is a mileage reading.

Junk yards, salvage yards and auto recyclers report under 25.56, also monthly. Their inventory carries the reporting entity’s details, the VIN, the date the vehicle was obtained, the name of the party it came from, and a statement of what happened to it — crushed, disposed of, sold on, exported. Again five elements, and again no mileage.

This is the structural fact underneath every disappointing odometer report. A car can be totalled by an insurer, sold to a recycler, and appear in the federal record twice, and neither of those entries will say how far it had been driven. Mileage enters the system at one door only: a state issuing a title. If a car has not been retitled recently, nothing recent has been recorded about its mileage, however much else happened to it.

The same asymmetry explains why an odometer check reads thin on some cars and dense on others, and why the density has nothing to do with which provider sold you the report. A car retitled across several states in a decade has been through the mileage door several times. A car that stayed in one owner’s hands in one state for the same decade has been through it once.

## The nine odometer codes, and what each one is claiming

The number on its own would be nearly useless without a status attached to it, so the system carries one. States apply their own brands under their own law, and those are mapped to a standard national set so that the meaning survives the border. Texas publishes its half of that mapping in full, along with the federal definition of each code, which makes it the cleanest public statement of what the odometer codes actually assert.

There are nine of them, grouped together as the odometer family. They run from 68 to 77, and the published list jumps from 74 to 76 — there is no 75 in it.

**The nine NMVTIS odometer codes, their federal meaning, and what Texas prints on a title when it receives each one. Source: TxDMV NMVTIS Guide, October 2023.**

| Code | What the code asserts | Texas brand applied |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 68 Actual | The reading is the true mileage for the vehicle. | Actual Mileage |
| 69 Not Actual | The reading is known to be something other than true mileage. No cause given. | Not Actual Mileage |
| 70 Not Actual — Odometer Tampering Verified | Same, and the cause is established: the instrument was tampered with. | Not Actual Mileage |
| 71 Exempt from Odometer Disclosure | The vehicle can change hands without any mileage disclosure at all. | Exempt |
| 72 Exceeds Mechanical Limits | The reading is lower than true mileage because the instrument cannot display the whole figure. | Mileage Exceeds Mechanical Limits |
| 73 Odometer May Be Altered | The titling authority suspects alteration of the instrument, but has not established it. | Not Actual Mileage |
| 74 Odometer Replaced | The instrument in the car is not the one fitted at manufacture. | Not Actual Mileage |
| 76 Odometer Discrepancy | The reading conflicts with values already recorded for that vehicle. | Not Actual Mileage |
| 77 Call Title Division | The authority knows of a problem it cannot print on a title. Handled by hand. | Referred; not printable |

Read down the middle column and the codes are doing genuinely different jobs. Code 74 is a maintenance fact: an instrument was changed, which is a normal repair, and the mileage on the new one is not the mileage of the car. Code 72 is an arithmetic fact about a five-digit dial that ran out of digits. Code 70 is an accusation with evidence behind it. Code 73 is a suspicion without evidence. Code 76 is the system catching itself out — the reading disagrees with values already on file.

A buyer looking at a used car should treat those very differently. A replaced instrument on a well-documented car with a repair invoice for the cluster is an inconvenience. Verified tampering is a completed fraud. The federal codes distinguish between them. Nothing further downstream necessarily does.

## Five codes go in, one brand comes out

The right-hand column of that table is where the distinctions start dying. Texas maps codes 69, 70, 73, 74 and 76 to a single brand: NOT ACTUAL MILEAGE. Five different assertions, one printed outcome. From the moment that title is issued, the car’s paperwork no longer says whether the problem was verified tampering, a swapped cluster or a numerical conflict. It says the mileage is not actual.

Texas also publishes the reverse table — how its own brands are reported back up to the federal system when it brands a vehicle. That table has twenty-four rows covering the whole brand vocabulary, and exactly two of them are odometer entries: MILEAGE EXCEEDS MECHANICAL LIMITS goes back as 72, and NOT ACTUAL MILEAGE goes back as 69.

Put the two tables end to end and the round trip is stark. Nine odometer codes can arrive. Two can leave. A car that entered the state carrying code 70, with tampering verified by another jurisdiction, is reported onward as code 69, tampering unverified. The evidence did not disappear from the branding state’s own records, but it stopped travelling.

**Why this matters when you read a result.** If your report comes back saying “not actual mileage”, you are not looking at the original finding. You are looking at whatever survived the last state’s conversion. The finding underneath it might be far worse than the label, and the only way to recover it is to ask the state that applied the brand for its own title record — a request approved providers are required to be able to point you towards, and one the national system will not answer for you.

None of this is a Texas peculiarity. It is what a mapping layer does. The federal glossary describes the arrangement plainly: state brands and vehicle statuses are mapped to national brands for consistency within the system, and the annual report notes that brands are developed in collaboration with the states. Consistency across fifty-odd jurisdictions and fidelity to the original finding are in tension, and the system resolves that tension in favour of consistency. Texas is simply one of the states that publishes its half of the map, so the cost is visible.

## The check that catches a rollback happens at a counter

The most useful thing to understand about odometer verification is that the real check is not the one you buy. It is the one a state is required to run before it hands somebody a title.

Under 25.54 every state must perform a title verification check through the national system before issuing a certificate of title to somebody claiming to have bought a car in another state, and in cases of title transfers. The check has four purposes written into the rule, and one of them is to compare and verify the odometer information presented against what the system already holds for that vehicle.

That comparison has teeth because it is automated and it is arithmetic. Texas documents the specific error it generates: error 535, raised when the odometer reading already in the national record is higher than the odometer captured on the Texas transaction. A car being retitled with a lower reading than it had last time trips it, every time, without anybody needing to be suspicious.

What happens next is documented too, and it is the part worth knowing. There are two ways out. Either the buyer and the seller from the transaction where the error arose provide a statement of fact correcting it — and that may not be the current buyer and seller, it may be a pair of people from a sale two owners ago — or, failing that, the record is branded NOT ACTUAL MILEAGE with the applicant’s acknowledgement.

So the mechanism is not a fraud investigation. It is a fork. Explain the discrepancy with signatures from the people who were there, or carry the brand. Most people cannot produce two strangers from a previous sale, which is precisely why the brand is the common outcome and why it is a reasonably reliable signal when you see one.

The scale is not trivial. In its own contribution to the federal annual report for 2024, Texas recorded 173 titles where odometers had been altered, alongside 18,916 transactions caught where a processing clerk had failed to carry forward a value-limiting brand printed on the surrendered ownership document. Those are one state’s figures for one year, and the second number is a reminder that the system is also catching human error at the counter, not only fraud in the driveway.

## Where the codes come from: three sentences on a title

Every code in that table starts life as a certification somebody signed. The federal odometer rules require a transferor to disclose the mileage to the buyer at the point ownership changes, on the title itself, with the reading, the date of transfer, both parties’ printed names and addresses, and the identity of the vehicle including its VIN.

Alongside the reading, 580.5 requires exactly one of three certifications, and this is the sentence the codes are built from.

The transferor certifies that to the best of their knowledge the reading reflects the actual mileage. Or, if they know the reading is past the instrument’s designed mechanical limit, they state that the mileage exceeds mechanical limits. Or, if they know the reading does not reflect a valid mileage display, or differs from the real mileage by more than calibration error, they state that the reading does not reflect actual mileage and should not be relied upon — and that statement must carry a warning to the buyer that a discrepancy exists.

Three certifications. Actual, exceeds mechanical limits, not actual. Those are the three doors, and codes 68, 72 and 69 are what comes out the other side of them. Everything else in the code table — tampering verified, may be altered, replaced, discrepancy — is a titling authority’s own finding, added because the agency knows something the transferor did not say.

Two more details in the rule are worth carrying into a purchase. The buyer signs the disclosure too, and the rule requires a copy to be made available to the transferor; on an electronic title the jurisdiction has to provide a means of making copies available to both parties. And nobody may sign as both transferor and transferee in the same transaction except under the narrow power-of-attorney provisions. That second rule exists because signing both halves is how a chain gets broken, and a broken chain is how a mileage figure gets lost. Our page on [what a branded title means](https://baronauto1.com/vehicle-history/what-is-a-branded-title/) sets out how the resulting brands rank against each other once they are on the paperwork.

## The brand outlives the exemption

The disclosure duty does not last forever, and the cliff is set out in 580.17. A transferor need not disclose mileage on a vehicle over 16,000 pounds gross vehicle weight rating, on anything not self-propelled, on a vehicle sold by a manufacturer directly to a federal agency, or on a new vehicle before its first non-resale transfer.

Then come the two age rules, and they run on different clocks. A vehicle built in or before the 2010 model year is exempt once it is transferred at least 10 years after the start of the calendar year matching its model year. A vehicle from the 2011 model year onward is exempt only after 20 years. The regulation supplies its own worked examples: in calendar year 2020, model year 2010 and older cars were exempt; in calendar year 2031, model year 2011 and older will be.

That is usually where guidance stops, and it leaves people with the wrong conclusion — that an old car’s odometer record goes blank. It does not. The exemption governs whether a new disclosure has to be made. It says nothing about brands already applied.

Texas states the point explicitly in its own procedures: the odometer brand must be retained even once the vehicle becomes exempt from odometer disclosure. If another state has code 69 or 72 on a car and Texas has recorded it as exempt, that is an error to be corrected in the state’s direction, not the exemption’s. And the state goes further — in the 2024 federal annual report Texas recorded 434 vehicles previously reported as exempt from odometer disclosure for which it applies the not-actual brand.

**Read that number carefully, because it cuts both ways.** It means an exemption is not a laundering mechanism: a car does not shed a mileage brand by getting old. It also means “exempt” is a status a state may convert into something worse when it sees the wider record. If you are buying an older car whose paperwork says exempt, that word is a statement about a legal duty, not a statement about the mileage, and it is worth exactly nothing as reassurance.

## How much of the federal brand file is odometer work

It is easy to assume odometer branding is a rounding error next to salvage and junk. The federal numbers say otherwise.

The Department’s 2024 annual report states that more than sixty distinct brands had been captured as of 30 September 2024, and charts the seven most common. Two of those seven are odometer brands. Odometer Not Actual accounts for 6% of everything reported, and Odometer Exceeds Mechanical Limits for a further 5%. Salvage leads at 38%, with Rebuilt and Junk at 19% each, Crushed at 3%, Dismantled at 2%, and everything else outside the top seven at 8%.

So roughly one brand in nine in the national file is an odometer brand. That is more than Crushed and Dismantled together, and more than the entire long tail of remaining brand types. Volume across the whole file has grown from around 158 million brand records reported in the 2020 financial year to more than 219 million in 2024, an increase of 72%.

Set that against what the safety agency says about the underlying offence. NHTSA estimates more than 450,000 vehicles are sold each year in the United States with false odometer readings, and puts the chance of odometer fraud occurring during a vehicle’s first 11 years at 3.47%. Its Office of Odometer Fraud Investigation runs four regional offices, and its investigations have produced more than 250 criminal convictions across more than 30 states, with criminal fines totalling more than $2.8 million and court-ordered restitution of more than $15 million.

Two agencies, two vantage points, the same conclusion: this is a high-volume offence that leaves a high-volume trace. The trace is exactly what an odometer check by VIN is searching.

## What a clean odometer check has actually told you

A result that comes back with a reading and no brand is genuinely good news, and it is narrower news than it looks. Four qualifications belong on it.

**The state is not obliged to act.** The rule requires states to run the comparison. It does not require them to do anything about the result. The Department says so directly: the receiving state’s own laws determine the status of the vehicle, the national information should be used to identify inconsistencies so that people may pursue state procedures for resolving them, and states are not required to take any specific action based on the data. A conflict can be surfaced and left unresolved.

**The reading is anchored to a titling date.** It is what was written down when a certificate was issued, which may be years before the car reached the forecourt and tells you nothing about the distance covered since.

**Timing varies by state.** Some states report and update in real time as title transactions occur; others send updates once every 24 hours or over a period of days. A very recent transfer may simply not be there yet.

**Absence of a record is not absence of an event.** The Department’s own guidance handles the case where a query returns no brand, odometer or title information at all: the likely explanation is that no participating state has reported any. A car that has never been retitled since the system began holding its data can return a genuinely empty odometer field, and an empty field is not a clean one.

Our page on [what the federal record is and is not](https://baronauto1.com/vehicle-history/nmvtis-report/) works through the wider boundaries — what it deliberately excludes, why it cannot be bought from the Department, and where the reporting duties have gaps. The odometer field sits inside all of those limits, plus the extra one this page has been making: only one of the three reporting streams ever mentions mileage.

## Running one, in the order that saves money

The free work comes first, because two of the three useful moves cost nothing.

Start with the title in front of you rather than a database. Read the mileage written on the document against the reading on the dash, and read the certification next to it — actual, exceeds mechanical limits, or not actual. NHTSA’s own advice is to examine the title closely if the mileage notation is obscured or hard to read, and an obscured notation is itself the finding. If the seller cannot show you the title, you have not begun.

Then look for dated readings the seller has no control over. Several states publish emissions test logs free, and those logs usually carry an odometer reading at each test with the date and the station attached. Our page on [free smog check history by VIN](https://baronauto1.com/guides/smog-check-history/) covers which states publish them and how to read the sequence. Two or three dated readings from a state testing programme will settle a rollback question faster than anything you can buy, and on a car tested annually they build the timeline the federal record does not hold.

Only then is a paid record worth the money, and it is worth it for a specific reason rather than a general one: it is the only way to see the brand and the status code that a state attached to the reading. Where the free checks have left a question — a gap in the emissions log, a title from a state you cannot query, a reading that looks low for the year — a report that carries [the last recorded reading with the odometer brand attached to it](https://carcheckervin.com/odometer-check?utm_source=baronauto&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=odometer-check-by-vin) is what turns a suspicion into something you can price or walk away from. CarCheckerVIN is one of the services that will return it.

Expect the federal component of that to be inexpensive. The Department’s own guidance says that as recently as May 2020, fees for reports drawn from the system ranged from $8 to $12.99, and that the system is funded by user fees rather than appropriations, which is why nobody gives it away. That is the Department’s last published range rather than a current price list, and providers set their own.

Finally, if mileage is the main reason the car is priced where it is, spend the rest on an inspection rather than a second report. The Department is unambiguous that a history report is not a substitute for an independent vehicle inspection, and on an odometer question the vehicle itself holds evidence no title record ever will.

## If the reading and the record disagree

Suppose the check comes back with a brand, or with a reading higher than the number on the dash. Three things follow, in order.

Document before you discuss. Photograph the odometer, the title including the mileage line and its certification, the VIN plate and the door-aperture label, and note the date. A discrepancy you can only describe is worth much less than one you can show, and every remedy below depends on the record you make now.

Take the disagreement to the branding state, not to the report vendor. The report is a copy; the state’s title file is the original, and it is the only place the finding underneath a collapsed brand still exists. Providers approved to sell the federal record are required to be able to direct customers to the state that titled the vehicle for records beyond what the report carries, and the state is where a genuine error also gets corrected.

Know what the statute provides if you have already bought. The federal odometer chapter gives a private right of action: somebody who violates it with intent to defraud is liable for three times actual damages or $10,000, whichever is greater, with the court awarding costs and a reasonable attorney’s fee to a successful claimant. The action must be brought within two years of the claim accruing. That floor was $1,500 until Congress raised it in 2012, which is worth knowing because older write-ups still quote the old figure.

Alongside that, report it. An individual case goes to your state enforcement agency. A large-scale scheme — the same dealer or the same seller recurring — goes to NHTSA, whose Office of Odometer Fraud Investigation exists for exactly that pattern and has the criminal-referral route that a state consumer office does not.

## Common questions

### Can you check a car’s odometer by VIN?

Yes, within limits. The federal title system returns, for a vehicle known to be titled in a state, the mileage disclosure recorded on the date that title was issued, plus any later reading the state chose to note, together with any odometer brand applied. It does not return a continuous mileage history, and it holds nothing about the distance covered since that titling date.

### Is there a free odometer check by VIN?

Not from the federal system, which is funded by user fees and sold through approved providers. The free work that genuinely helps is comparing the title’s mileage line and certification against the dash, and pulling any state emissions test log, several of which publish dated odometer readings at no cost.

### What does an odometer brand on a title mean?

That a titling authority attached a status to the mileage. There are nine codes in the federal set. One says the reading is true, one says the vehicle is exempt from disclosure, one says the instrument has run past its mechanical limit, and the rest describe different kinds of wrongness: not actual, tampering verified, may be altered, replaced, discrepancy, and one code reserved for problems that cannot be printed on a title at all.

### What is the difference between “not actual mileage” and “odometer discrepancy”?

Federally they are separate codes with separate meanings — 69 for a reading known to be untrue with no cause given, 76 where the reading conflicts with values already recorded for that vehicle. In practice a state may print both as the same brand. Texas maps five of the nine codes, including both of those, onto the single brand NOT ACTUAL MILEAGE.

### Does an odometer brand ever come off?

Not by the passage of time. The disclosure duty expires with age, but a brand already applied is retained; Texas says so expressly, and in one year applied the not-actual brand to 434 vehicles that had previously been reported as exempt from disclosure. Brands are removed to correct genuine errors, through the state that applied them, not by waiting.

### Which cars are exempt from odometer disclosure?

Vehicles over 16,000 pounds gross vehicle weight rating, vehicles that are not self-propelled, new vehicles before their first non-resale transfer, and vehicles sold by a manufacturer directly to a federal agency. On age, a model year 2010 or earlier vehicle is exempt once transferred at least 10 years after the start of its model year; from model year 2011 onward the period is 20 years.

### Do insurance companies report mileage to the federal system?

No. Insurers are required to file monthly inventories of vehicles they took possession of and decided were junk or salvage, and the rule lists five data elements for that report. None of them is an odometer reading. The same is true of junk yards, salvage yards and recyclers. State titling agencies are the only mandatory source of mileage.

### Will a check show every reading the car has ever had?

No. The federal record is designed around the most recent reading in the state’s title record, with earlier ones appearing only where a state noted them. A dated sequence of readings is a commercial product assembled from service, inspection and auction records, or it is the individual state’s own title file, which you request from that state.

### How do states actually catch a rollback?

By comparing readings at the counter. Every state must verify title information through the national system before issuing a title on a vehicle coming from elsewhere, and the comparison of the presented odometer against the recorded one is part of that check. A lower reading raises a specific error; unless the parties to the earlier transaction supply a statement of fact correcting it, the record is branded not actual mileage.

### Is a clean odometer check enough to buy on?

No. States are required to run the comparison but are not required to act on what it shows, reporting timing varies from real time to several days, and a car that has not been retitled recently may return no odometer information at all. Treat a clean result as one good signal among several, and pair it with dated readings from an independent source and a physical inspection.

### How common is odometer fraud?

NHTSA estimates more than 450,000 vehicles are sold each year in the United States with false odometer readings, and puts the chance of it occurring in a vehicle’s first 11 years at 3.47%. The federal brand file reflects that: two of the seven most common brand types nationally are odometer brands, at 6% and 5% of all brands reported through 30 September 2024.

### What can I recover if I bought a car with a rolled-back odometer?

The federal odometer chapter allows a private action against somebody who violated it with intent to defraud, for three times actual damages or $10,000, whichever is greater, plus costs and a reasonable attorney’s fee, brought within two years of the claim accruing. Whether you get there depends almost entirely on the documentation you gathered before the argument started.

## Sources and further reading

- [28 CFR Part 25 Subpart B — NMVTIS reporting rules (eCFR)](https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-28/chapter-I/part-25/subpart-B)
- [NMVTIS (US Department of Justice)](https://vehiclehistory.bja.ojp.gov/)
- [Understanding an NMVTIS Vehicle History Report](https://vehiclehistory.bja.ojp.gov/nmvtis_understandingvhr)
- [NMVTIS approved data providers](https://vehiclehistory.bja.ojp.gov/nmvtis_vehiclehistory)
- [TxDMV salvage vehicles and title brands](https://www.txdmv.gov/motorists/buying-or-selling-a-vehicle/title-check-look-before-you-buy/salvage-brands)
- [49 CFR Part 580 (odometer disclosure requirements)](https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-49/subtitle-B/chapter-V/part-580)
- [49 U.S.C. §32710 (odometer fraud: civil actions by private persons)](https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/USCODE-2023-title49/USCODE-2023-title49-subtitleVI-partC-chap327-sec32710)
- [NHTSA odometer fraud](https://www.nhtsa.gov/equipment/odometer-fraud)

Recall, complaint and safety-rating figures on this page were retrieved from the federal databases above on August 19, 2026. Federal data changes — re-check any VIN before you rely on it.

---

*This site is under new ownership and is not affiliated with Baron Auto Emporium dealership.*

Canonical source: https://baronauto1.com/vehicle-history/odometer-check-by-vin/