A new report ties $900 million in 2025 insurance losses to a fast-growing vehicle financing fraud scheme moving cars out of Canada.
Published by the Canadian Finance & Leasing Association (CFLA-ACFL), the report, "Fraudulent Financing and Illegal Vehicle Exports," describes organized crime groups moving away from traditional car theft. Instead, criminals use stolen or fabricated identities to secure legitimate auto loans, then export the vehicles before lenders or police catch on. Because the vehicles are never reported stolen, they never enter the RCMP’s Canadian Police Information Centre database - the very system border officers rely on to flag suspicious exports.
The scale is significant. Citing the Équité Association, the CFLA-ACFL points to a 72 percent year-over-year jump in fraudulently financed vehicles funneled toward export through major ports, including Montreal and Halifax. The RCMP’s own numbers back that up: its Project NoCargo pilot intercepted or recovered 392 vehicles worth an estimated $28 million over the past year, and the agency has linked the broader rise in vehicle finance fraud to an estimated $900 million in insurance losses in 2025.
At its core, the report makes a legal argument aimed at Ottawa. A vehicle obtained through fraudulent financing, it contends, counts as property obtained by crime under the Criminal Code of Canada - covered by the fraud, theft, and motor vehicle theft provisions, along with sections that prohibit trafficking or exporting the proceeds of an indictable offence. According to the report, that gives the Canada Border Services Agency the legal authority under the Customs Act to examine, detain and seize these vehicles before they leave the country, and to share relevant information with owners, lenders and police.
The trouble isn’t the law - it’s the tools, the report says. The CBSA has no reliable way to check whether a vehicle bound for export carries a lien, because Canada has no national lien database. Liens are recorded province by province, and the export declaration exporters file only requires a vehicle identification number, with no lien or financing information attached. With as many as 250,000 vehicles declared for export from Canadian ports each year, manual checks simply aren’t realistic, the report notes.
To close the gap, the CFLA-ACFL lays out six recommendations. Among them: requiring exporters to confirm on record whether a lien exists, requiring a lien release letter for financed vehicles headed abroad, building a national lien database through the existing Interprovincial Record Exchange, and clarifying the CBSA’s authority to share information with lenders and police before a vehicle ships.
The full report is available through the Canadian Finance & Leasing Association at https://cfla-acfl.ca/industry-intelligence/automotive-data/vehicle-theft-illegal-exports.html.
