Well I just took about an hour to read all these post, thanks for killing time on a cold dreary day. I guess I'll go back to work now. Worse then women at the bingo hall.
People win at Bingo fairly often.
With VIN & insurance frauds & fakers in the hobby, we all lose.
The one bright side is that the Moparts resident fakers & frauds identify themselves over & over for all the public to see.
The ones that partake/endorse in VIN swaps/reboding openly have nothing to hide, and have acknowledged that this segment of the hobby exists, and always will...
What I have found surprising(not really) over the decades are the quiet ones that build, possess, buy and sell VIN swapped/rebodied vehicles over the years and do it knowingly, these are often individuals who will publicly denounce this practice (I see/know many of them here on Moparts and other forums waving the phony righteous banner), yet in a two face fashion, partake in it, I've met many renowned individuals in the hobby often endeared to the masses for saving/restoring a vehicle back to it's "originality", even one "registry" owner who proudly boast(behind closed doors) of their rebodied/VIN swapped vehicle(s) in their collection, or individuals who have shown me "enveloped" collections of VIN tags/fender tags/buildsheets of long lost vehicles, or actual vehicles too far gone, that they hope to shortly resurrect via a rebody/VIN swap and add to their collection, or resale at auction, National event, or Ebay, etc, etc...
IMHO the only things that are lost in this aspect of the hobby, are the vehicles, esp of prominence that are not resurrected via VIN swapping/reboding to see the light of day once again because of some gray misinterpretations of already vague laws, or perhaps crusades by self-anointed registry watchdogs to black list such vehicles, which in the end game have no real effect or impact, just another hurdle to overcome
