The National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB) maintains a centralized database of stolen vehicles which helps law enforcement and insurance companies identify potentially stolen cars. This system uses vehicle identification numbers (VIN) to track information such as the make/model year combination, number produced, and prior ownership history for each car on U.S. roads.
The National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB) provides a free lookup service to determine if a vehicle has been reported salvage or stolen but not recovered.
The free service is called VINCheck.
How to Perform a VIN Check
To use VINCheck, you will first need the vehicle's VIN. Then do the following:
- Navigate to the NICB VINCheck website
- Enter the vehicle VIN in the textbox labeled “Enter VIN”
- Agree to the terms and conditions
- Confirm that you are human (and not a robot)
- Click on the “Search VIN” button
The lookup in NICB's database will take seconds to complete. If the vehicle is “clean”, you should see a message indicating that the vehicle's VIN did not show up in the thefts records or salvage records.
Please note that VINCheck searches the theft and salvage data from participating insurance companies.
Need More Information About a Vehicle?
If you want more information about the vehicle's specifications and vehicle's history like DMV records, service records, etc., you should check out the following low cost vehicle history reports that are under $20: