Don’t Hand the Car Keys to a Fraudster

Identity fraud at the dealership isn't slowing down. In a late-2025 survey by eLEND Solutions, 77% of dealers said fraud-related activity had increased over the past two years, and 41% lost at least one vehicle to identity fraud in the past year alone. Nearly one in four lost 10 or more vehicles over two years.

Two moments carry the most risk: the test drive and the purchase.

On a test drive, a customer can leave with a vehicle and never come back. Asking for a driver's license first doesn't solve the problem — a photocopy of a fake ID is still a fake ID. By the time anyone notices, the car and the driver are gone.

The risk doesn't end when the test drive does. Vehicles are high-value purchases, often financed or leased, which brings Know Your Customer (KYC) obligations: dealers need to know who they're doing business with. Losses are also climbing in financing. Auto lending fraud exposure reached an estimated $10.4 billion in 2025, up 13% from the year before, according to Point Predictive. The National Insurance Crime Bureau reports that borrowers flagged as likely synthetic identities default at 12.5 times the rate of typical consumers, with average losses of $22,000 to $50,000 per case.

Why It’s Hard to Spot a Fake

Driver's licenses vary by state and province, each with its own design and security features. Today's fakes are good enough that a visual check rarely catches them, and anyone can generate a barcode that reads as valid and matches what's printed on the front. Nearly half of the dealers in the eLEND survey named fake driver's licenses as the top reason purchase fraud is rising.

Intellicheck's own data shows how often problem IDs reach the counter. In 2025, 1.6% of ID verifications in auto sales failed, according to the 2026 Intellicheck Identity Verification Threat Report.

Digital buying adds another layer of risk. In the same eLEND survey, 39% of dealers said 40% or more of their fraud is now tied to remote or digital transactions, and 95% expect identity fraud to keep growing as more of the deal moves online. A stolen identity that hasn't been reported yet looks legitimate at every step.

Catch the Fake Before the Keys Change Hands

Intellicheck goes beyond what the eye can see. It verifies the authoritative security layer the issuing DMV builds into every license — hidden data that's never printed or published, so a fake can't replicate it. Intellicheck verifies more than 250 versions of U.S. and Canadian driver's licenses and ID cards currently in circulation. It returns a decision in under a second on the phones, tablets, and scanners a dealership already has. It can run on its own or integrate with dealer systems, and negligible false positives mean genuine customers aren't turned away.

The results show up fast. Two dealerships that had lost vehicles on test drives — after photocopying licenses that police later confirmed were fake — added Intellicheck on their existing devices. They expected to catch five or six fake IDs a year. Instead they caught as many as five in a single week.

See how Intellicheck helps dealerships verify every customer before the keys change hands.

Sources

• Dealer survey figures (77%, 41%, 24%, 39%, 95%, fake licenses as top reason): eLEND Solutions, February 2, 2026
• $10.4B, up 13%: Point Predictive 2026 Auto Lending Fraud Trends Report, via Digital Dealer, April 17, 2026
• Synthetic identity default rate and losses per case: National Insurance Crime Bureau, October 19, 2026
• 1.6%: 2026 Intellicheck Identity Verification Threat Report (project file)
• Case study: Intellicheck automotive page

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