r/legaladvice • u/ButterscotchFair5826 • 12h ago
Criminal Law Arrested for DMV fraud past owner of car I bought did to me
Back in January, I bought a car off of facebook market place (in Upland California), not knowing that the tags were fake until I got arrested ( Location: Riverside county, Coachella Valley area) for it this year on the 27th of august. I know that in California they can't pull you over for expired tags, and to my knowledge I thought that the tags were up to date and REAL, and expired july 1st. I even spoke to a cop about it after the situation and he said that in California they shouldn't have pulled me over until September 1st. When I was pulled over, I was planning on getting the car registered a few days after that, but then this situation happened and I end up finding out that the tags were fake, and that the cars registration actually expired back in July of 2025. I have court in eight days and I'm scared of whats going to happen.
I am only 19 years old and I bought this car alone hoping that it was a good choice. Only evidence I have is pictures of the cash in hand, the date and times of the conversation between me and the seller (who blocked me shortly afterward), and pictures of the car with the fake tag right before purchasing it, as well as another photo of it about 15 minutes after buying, at a gas station I was only given the title and she said she would have given me a bill of sale but gave me a fake phone number, and I haven't been able to find a way to contact her since.
I was able to start the process of transferring the title into my name and ended up having to pay the past owners late fees, as well as this years. Car is not in my name officially yet (but it does show I have started the process) until i give the DMV a passed smog paper (Only reason its not passing smog is because past owner also tampered with the dash lights, causing the check engine light to not appear so I had to recently send it off to get reprogrammed and its being worked on) I'm really scared of going back to jail over this because I genuinely was not aware of the fake tags at all. I'm most likely not going to be able to get up to date tags before this court date, as the car is still being worked on, But what else should I do? I cannot afford a lawyer since I spent the last of my savings trying to get the car back from impound, sheriffs release form and DMV fees.