Odometer fraud, also referred to as "busting miles" (United States) or "clocking" (UK, Ireland and Canada), is the illegal practice of rolling back odometers to make it appear that vehicles have lower mileage than they actually do.
In the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's (NHTSA) 2002 odometer fraud study, the NHTSA determined that 450,000 vehicles were sold each year with false odometer readings, resulting in a cost of over $1 billion annually to car buyers in the US.
[3] In the UK, the Office of Fair Trading estimates the annual cost at £500m.
[6] There are a number of ways in which a vehicle buyer might determine existence of possible odometer fraud.
[7] In the US, states require vehicle purchasers to obtain a title or certificate of registration due to federal laws.