Vehicles: registration fraud.

Existing law prohibits a person from driving, moving, or leaving standing upon a highway, or in an offstreet public parking facility, any motor vehicle, trailer, semitrailer, pole or pipe dolly, or logging dolly, unless it is registered and the appropriate fees have been paid, except as specified. Existing law makes it a felony for a person who, with the intent to prejudice, damage, or defraud, alters, forges, counterfeits, or falsifies a registration card or who utters, publishes, passes, or attempts to pass, as true and genuine, a false, altered, forged, or counterfeited registration card knowing it to be false, altered, forged, or counterfeited. This bill would, until January 1, 2021, request the University of California to conduct a study on motor vehicle registration fraud and failure to register a motor vehicle, and would require the study to include specified information, including quantification of the magnitude of the problem, the costs to the state and local governments in lost revenues, and recommended strategies for increasing compliance with registration requirements. The bill would require the Department of Motor Vehicles to enter into an agreement with the University of California to share its vehicle registration information for purposes of conducting the study and would require the Department of the California Highway Patrol to provide specified information to the University of California researchers who are conducting the study. The bill would request the University of California to post a report of the study on its Internet Web site no later than January 1, 2018. Existing law specifies requirements for the form and display of month and year vehicle registration tabs. This bill would require the Department of Motor Vehicles to post on its Internet Web site, and any other appropriate online venue used by the department for public outreach, detailed instructions for motorists that describe how to prevent theft of those tabs.