Four police officers to be charged over odometer tampering racket

Four police officers are to be charged in court on 3 October over involvement in the odometer tampering racket of imported cars, MaltaToday has learnt. 

The development comes after the police officers were suspended from the force last month, sources close to the investigation said. 

The officers’ suspension and eventual prosecution follows a year-long investigation into the scam operated by at least two second-hand Japanese car importers. The scam involved deceiving consumers by tampering the mileage gauge to show fewer kilometres. 

It is unclear what part the four police officers had in the scam but part of the racket involved police officers in the Grand Harbour failing to fill in the car mileage on official documents. 

MaltaToday exclusively revealed last year how hundreds of consumers were sold second-hand Japanese cars with tampered mileage gauges. 

Cars bought from Japanese bidding markets on the cheap because of their high mileage, would then be sold in Malta. However, upon arrival in Malta these cars had their odometers tampered to show low mileages. 

Two car dealerships, Rokku Autodealer of Ghaxaq and Tal-Qasab of Qormi were identified as the culprits in this scam. No criminal action has been taken yet against the two companies despite the owners being interrogated by the police. 

It is still unclear when, or if, they will be charged and both companies have continued to operate. 

Last June, MaltaToday reported that the police bail for the suspected dealers had been lifted. They had also been issued with an attachment order. 

Attachment orders are usually issued in money laundering cases. The court orders that all moneys and other movable property owed or pertaining or belonging to the suspect be taken out of suspect’s control and placed in the care of a third party. 

How did the racket operate? 

An exercise carried out by MaltaToday on a sample of 18 cars flagged by multiple industry sources, revealed discrepancies ranging between 30,000km and 130,000km between the original mileage and the one registered in Malta. 

Crucially, industry sources had told MaltaToday that the racket started the moment the cars arrived in Malta. When cars are offloaded at Laboratory Wharf in the Grand Harbour, the police must fill in the Vehicle 5 (VEH 005) customs and police inspection form. 

The manual form contains several fields, including one where the car’s dashboard mileage is listed. 

However, it appeared that dealers often used the excuse that the car battery was drained throughout their voyage at sea on the cargo ship, preventing the dashboard mileage from being read by the inspecting police officers. 

In these instances, the inspector left the mileage field blank so that the dealer could fill it in later, when the car is restarted using a booster. 

Following the MaltaToday investigation, Transport Malta increased its scrutiny of documentation presented by car dealers who import used vehicles from Japan. 

The transport regulator later stepped in to supplant the process previously manned by police officers, to verify the mileage declared in documentation from importers, with data available in JEVIC databases. These are databases where the correct car mileage is recorded before the vehicle leaves Japan. 

Several consumers bitten by the scam also took their case to the consumer affairs authority, demanding compensation from the dealers.