Woman may have ties to theft ring

[CarDealerCheck]

Cape Coral woman arrested in Gainesville on Wednesday may have ties to a car theft operation investigators suspect is linked to other parts of the country and Mexico, according to police.

Gainesville Police Officer Daniel Surrency stopped Anna Ruth Nova, 25, as she was leaving a local car dealership where she had just purchased a vehicle, said Gainesville Police Sgt. Steve Baker.

Nova was wanted on an arrest warrant for grand theft after allegedly selling a stolen vehicle to another dealership last month. Inside the new vehicle she had just purchased Wednesday, police located $20,000 cash, which they then seized from Nova.

The investigation surrounding Nova is part of a larger case involving fake vehicle identification numbers, said Detective Jorge Campos.
Officers allege Nova used the falsified numbers to fool the Alachua County Tag Agency Office and a local car dealership last month into thinking she had a legal California title for a 2007 Lincoln Navigator she later sold to the dealer.

Campos said the fraudulent information for the stolen car was professionally produced.

"Whoever did them did such a good job that when the tag agency verified the VIN, they did not detect it was a possible forgery," Campos said.
Other law enforcement agencies are investigating the fake titles, the detective said, and believe the documents could be coming out of Mexico.
Both the tag agent and the car dealer took the proper steps to check the information Nova provided, Campos added.

"There was no way for them to know. If a police officer stopped that vehicle, a police officer probably wouldn't have noticed," Campos said.
The car turned out to be stolen from Miami.

Campos said no one realized the Lincoln Navigator was a stolen vehicle until after Nova sold it and a dealer drove it to Tampa in late January. A vehicle theft recovery system on the car, which does not operate in the Alachua County area, activated and alerted officers. The man came out to find officers around the vehicle and had to explain he had legally obtained it.

On Feb. 12, someone using the same type of information as Nova again obtained a title from the area tag agency for a 2007 Hummer, Campos said. Employees at the agency realized soon afterward there might be a connection to the other case but weren't able to alert officers in time.

Campos said the tag agency has since taken additional steps to alert employees about the fake titles and VINs and to verify the information.

Meanwhile, GPD plans to share information from the case against Nova with other law enforcement agencies to try to learn where the counterfeit information is coming from.

Source: http://www.gainesville.com/article/2...0329/1002/NEWS