New Jersey Lemon Law Lawyer Blog
National Insurance Crime Bureau or NICB, appears to be an organization, a not-for-profit organization, to assist various entities including law enforcement and insurance companies in preventing various types of insurance fraud. It also appears that they had created, maintain and utilize a database which obtains information from insurance companies among other sources. It appears through the website that there is a service and/or database which were created through National Insurance Brime Bureau that appears to store information on vehicles, stored through their vehicle identification numbers.
It also appears that there is something called VINCheck which is a service various entities can use to check the history of automobiles. One would assume that the reliability and the usefulness of this database depend upon the source of the information.
The NICB was formed in 1992 from a merger between the National Automobile Theft Bureau (NATB) and the Insurance Crime Prevention Institute (ICPI), both of which were not-for-profit organizations. The NATB — which managed vehicle theft investigations and developed vehicle theft databases for use by the insurance industry — dates to the early 20th century, while the ICPI investigated insurance fraud for approximately 20 years before joining with the NATB to form the present National Insurance Crime Bureau.
NICB’s VINCheck is a free service provided to the public to assist in determining if a vehicle has been reported as stolen, but not recovered, or has been reported as a salvage vehicle by cooperating NICB member insurance companies. To perform a search, a vehicle identification number (VIN) is required. A maximum of five searches can be conducted within a 24-hour period per IP address.
The public can utilize the services provided by NICB such to determine whether or not there is a negative history on the vehicle which you purchased or are purchasing. This appears to be a very simple method of checking various history of your automobile. Remember not all history is reported to this database and it is limited depending on which insurance companies, and what information from which insurance companies reported. This could be a starting point for your research on an automobile. Maybe there is much information which is not reported but you might be able to find out which states that the vehicle has been titled, having prior owners and other pertinent information which you might consider important when purchasing your car or doing research on your car purchase. Remember it is a free resource to be used by potential purchasers. If you were to pull this resource and bring it with you to the car dealership you guessed the car dealership to potentially run a Carfax or other types of services to confirm the information contained in this database.
It is also my understanding that Carfax receives updates and reports the same information as contained in this database.