HOUSTON — A New Orleans police officer visiting Houston was shot and killed in the Galleria area in August 2021. The getaway car used by the suspects had temporary tags, which turned out to be bogus.
This was not an isolated incident.
There are thousands of paper plates on the road that shouldn’t be. A loophole with the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles has allowed fake car dealerships to print and sell temporary plates.
“Texas is the laughingstock of paper plates in the United States,” Vidor Police Capt. Edward Martin said.
Capt. Martin, who is also an executive board member of the Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas, said he’s been following this issue for years.
"These people have direct access to the Texas DMV e-licensing system. It's the same tag. It's just issued illegally,” Capt. Martin.
Capt. Martin said there is not a vetting process in place.
“I can go in and put last name Smith first name John from Timbuktu, United States. They'll take it. They don't vet you. They don't want to know if you're a living human being,” he said.
HPD Sgt. Tracy Hicks, with the Houston Auto Crimes Task Force, said about 40 percent of the stolen cars they get into their impound lot come in with bogus tags.
"This is a $100,000 truck, brand spanking new. We usually take them off here because it goes into evidence. This is what the crook was driving,” he said. “If his story is, ‘Oh well, I bought it.’ Oh really? If you bought it, why do you have a paper tag that's no good?”
Hicks went on to say that a lot of criminals will swap out their real license plates for papers ones while they are in the process of committing a crime.
“A lot of criminals they put on a paper tag go out, commit their crime, take it off and then go back to the real tags,” he said.
HPD Sgt. Thomas Griffin demonstrated how it works.
“This is a fake temporary car tag, and this specific dealership was selling it out of a lot that really didn’t exist, correct?" KHOU 11 News asked.
“That’s correct. It was found on a vehicle with a bad VIN. It also has a bad Mylar sticker inside the door," Sgt. Griffin said. "So, it was a stolen vehicle, but was being driven around with a fake paper dealer tag issued by Kasniels Auto Sale LLC."
KHOU 11 News went to find Kasniels Auto Sales on Lockwood Drive and could find no trace of the business. We are not the only ones who had a hard time finding them.
According to the Texas DMV, Kasniels' license was revoked on Nov. 8, 2021, “for the misuse of temporary tags and for failing to meet the requirements of an established and permanent place of business.”
The Texas DMV stated Kasniels Auto Sales “issued more than 7,800 buyer’s temporary tags in less than a week, on or about 8/26/2021 to on or about 8/30/2021.”
Sgt. Hicks said that’s impossible.
“We've seen a lot of car dealerships that don't even have a car lot that are selling thousands of these,” he said.
CTC Financial, the sister company of Coast to Coast Motors in Houston, filed a lawsuit against Kasniels claiming it sold a fraudulent tag that was used by a driver to skip out on a car note loan.
KHOU 11 News talked to Coast to Coast Marketing Director April Hanson who confirmed they couldn’t find the company.
“No, we have not been able to track the Kasniels down,” she said.
KHOU 11 News tried tracking down Kasniels as well to get their take. In addition to that empty lot we visited, we made phone calls, and searched, but couldn't find any sign of anyone tied to their DMV license.
So, what could or should be done to crack down on fraudulent temp plates?
Texas cracking down on fake paper plates
Sgt. Joe Escribano, with the Travis County Precinct 3 Constable’s Office, obtained a Texas DMV web dealer tag report and crunched the numbers. He said this problem has cost local and state governments at least $220 million in lost revenue from 2018 to 2021.
That number, according to Sgt. Escribano’s breakdown of the report, increases by about $2 million per week. Police call it a multi-million-dollar criminal enterprise hiding in plain sight.
There's been some progress on enforcement. A tollway crackdown in January lead to more than 1,300 citations.
Law enforcement officers go through all this training to catch temporary illegal tags out on the streets, but some told us this issue could be stopped dead in its tracks if dealers are properly verified.
The Texas DMV has acted against dealers it said are abusing the system.
Records obtained by KHOU 11 News show that the agency revoked the license to print tags from 34 Texas dealers from the start of 2021 through the last week of February. Many of them were in Houston.
However, Capt. Martin insists DMV can do more.
“We could almost end this overnight, because all those ones who want to do it the right way, will go down and pay those $25 a person," he said.
He said dealers could be verified by picture, fingerprints and even a state-issued ID.
“All the bad guys go away. They are not going to come down and identify themselves,” he said.
According to HPD’s Auto Theft Task Force, the DMV has put new limits on the number of tags a single dealer can print each month and made it easier to quickly shut down dealers for fraud.
The Texas DMV board did vote to consider the use of fingerprinting for the dealer licensing process, but that was before their executive director resigned in early February.
RELATED: Head of Texas DMV resigns amid pressure to stop widespread sale of fake paper license plates
Nevada DMV official issues warning about Texas paper plates
And the fraudulent paper plate issue isn’t just causing grief here, it’s creeping into other states which are counting on the Texas DMV board to resolve it, once and for all.
Joseph Decker, the compliancy enforcement division chief of the Nevada DMV, shares why they’re issuing a serious warning to Nevada drivers about Texas paper tags.
WATCH: Nevada DMV official issues warning to drivers about Texas paper tags