The King of Titles

"Anytime you take a car from out of state that's never been titled in Florida before, you can roll back the miles or eliminate [the fact that it's been totaled in a wreck]," Cravens says. "There have been bills introduced for a national titling system, but it's never happened. If they ever get off their butts and tie these systems together, you would see the auto-theft rates drop considerably, because you can't deal in stolen cars if you can't get papers for them. The odometer rollbacks would decrease drastically. But they ain't doing it."

John Tower, the FHP investigator who arrested Williams, says he has lobbied the state legislature to regulate title companies -- namely to require people who work in the business to get state licenses.

"That's the only way they'll get any control over them," he says.
Ron Wedegan, a 28-year veteran of the Florida Highway Patrol and president of the National Odometer and Title Fraud Enforcement Association, says another change that must be made is in the level of training for both police officers and title clerks. And he says he is currently working with the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles to come up with a suitable training program for the clerks, whom Williams laughs about, saying they're paid $18,000 a year and have no idea what the laws are. As for police officers, Wedegan says many of them don't understand the complex lien laws either.

"Too often they really think it's a civil matter when it isn't," he says, adding that prosecutors around the state make the same false judgment.

That plays right into Randoph Williams' hands. But life is not all easy for Williams. He has the fraud counts to contend with, and during the New Times interview, Williams' landlord -- a real landlord -- had Williams' own car towed out of the parking lot because Williams has for months been littering the office building's lot with cars. When the landlord stopped by Williams' office, a heated debate ensued between the two men that ended shortly after Williams tried to close the door -- with his landlord still in the doorway. Then BSO deputies arrived. The landlord had filed a simple battery complaint against Williams. The deputy took a report but left without arresting Williams.

And Williams, after swearing revenge on the landlord, got back to work, hustling up titles and getting forms ready for filing with the DMV.

Contact Bob Norman at his e-mail address:
Bob_Norman@newtimesbpb.com