Photograph by Marcos Vasconcelos, Flickr.

Wen and Zach over at Vespa Soho and Kymco Brooklyn have informed us of their recent conversations with the NYPD Auto Crime Unit who have been visiting local scooter dealers to educate new scooter buyers on the seriousness of altering or outright removing VINs to foil parking attendants.

Below, is an important message to NYC area scooterists from Vespa Soho:

VIN ENFORCEMENT ALERT!

Dear fellow scooterists,

Many in the community have the practice of removing license plates to avoid parking tickets and plate theft. This is an equipment violation punishable by a fine.

Others have gone farther and removed or altered the external VIN on their scooters to further hinder parking enforcement. Of course, if your scoot is towed, you will never find it in the system, but that’s not the reason to avoid this practice. For those of you thinking about altering or removing your VIN, DON’T DO IT! VIN tampering laws were written with organized crime in mind, and the consequences can be very severe.

We recently spent a long time speaking with a NYPD Detective from the Auto Crime Unit who informed us that a task force is confiscating scooters and motorcycles that have altered or missing external VINs (“the public VIN”). This task force will wait for an owner to return to their vehicle or come to the pound and then arrest and charge the owner with a FELONY – tampering with a VIN – when they come to claim their vehicle.

For Vespa owners who have removed the VIN plate from their bikes, you must re-install the plate with factory style rivets. For those who have altered, damaged or missing public VINs, there is a process through the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles where you can make an appointment to have your vehicle inspected and DMV will issue a new external VIN.

We contacted the Division of Field Investigations (518) 474-2019 and they told us the following:

1. Visit a NYS DMV office and obtain a 272.1 form (Application for Vehicle Identification Number), fill it out mail back to the Division of Field Investigations along with a $25 fee. Unfortunately the form is not online.
2. Upon receipt of the application, the Division of Field Investigations will assign a new VIN and set an appointment to have the vehicle examined for $150.
3. On the day of the appointment, an inspector will physically examine the vehicle and affix a new external VIN plate and provide a receipt.
4. The owner then needs to go back to a NYS DMV office with old title, receipt from Division of Field Investigations examination and new insurance card to amend the title to reflect the new VIN for $50.

The Detective also told us that they are now clipping locks of scooters that are tied to poles or fences in order to impound them. NYPD is taking this very seriously and has already impounded dozens of vehicles and will continue to aggressively do so.

We wanted to give everyone a heads up on this important issue. Ride safely.

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