Title fraud usually sounds like it needs a print shop or a crooked clerk. Police in Paragould, Arkansas, say this one needed something simpler: a tow company’s letterhead and a state system that trusts tow paperwork.
Heather Patterson, 45, owner of Prestige Towing, was booked into the Greene County jail in June on a $100,000 bond. The roster lists four offenses: theft of a motor vehicle, falsifying business records, false evidence of title, and second-degree forgery. The Paragould police probable cause affidavit breaks that into 30 forgery counts, 27 false-title counts, 89 falsified-record counts and one theft count. That’s 147 charges. She hasn’t been convicted of any of them.
The car that started it
The affidavit says Patterson came to a woman’s home on East Lake Street on April 2 to repossess her car. The owner thought it was legitimate and handed over the keys. Later the car showed up on Facebook in someone else’s hands, and her lender told police it had never ordered a repossession.
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Detectives got the state’s copy of the paperwork from the Arkansas Department of Finance and Administration. Cpl. Johnathon Porter wrote that it included a Prestige tow slip, signed by Patterson, saying the car “was abandoned and was a water recovery.” The VIN filed with the state was wrong, and police say that let the car be registered to another person. Patterson told detectives it “must have been a mistake.” The affidavit points out that the VIN printed in the required newspaper legal notice was correct.
That detail matters. In some cases Arkansas lets a tow operator notify owners and lienholders with a single newspaper notice. If nobody claims the vehicle in time, the owner and lender waive their interest. The system assumes the tow company is telling the truth. Investigators clearly don’t think Prestige was.
A dispatcher who never called
Police say the seized records include 89 tow slips claiming Greene County Central Dispatch requested the tows. According to Porter, Prestige had been off the countywide rotation since Jan. 30, 2023, and dispatch software has no record of those calls. Federal records also show the company’s USDOT registration, listed under Heather Patterson doing business as Prestige Towing, was revoked in December 2023 for refusing an audit.
Why name dispatch? A tow ordered by law enforcement is the most routine way a car ends up in an impound lot unclaimed. It’s exactly the paper trail that makes an abandoned-vehicle title look normal.
“Lien washing” and its customers
In July, Paragould police charged five more people after going through records and devices seized June 23. Detectives call the scheme “lien washing”: tow paperwork labels a financed vehicle abandoned, the abandoned-vehicle process produces a new title, and the lender’s lien disappears.
Here’s what the affidavits allege. Two Marmaduke residents asked about getting a new plate on a 2019 Jeep Cherokee so the lender couldn’t take it. A Paragould man who police say lives with Patterson bought his own 2016 Ram back at a Prestige auction for under $5,000 after the lien vanished. An Oak Grove Heights man is accused of paying $100 through Cash App for an abandoned title on his 2015 F-150. All four are charged with defrauding a secured creditor, a Class D felony that carries up to six years.
The fifth man, Kerry Wooldridge, is accused of running it the other way. Police say he parked his 2019 Ram at Prestige’s lot and asked for the billed storage time to be doubled from 52 to 104 days. His lender reportedly paid about $7,400 to get the truck back. He’s charged with Class C felony theft.
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Patterson is also accused of charging a buyer $100 for a temporary plate and signing a bill of sale on a motorcycle that turned out to be stolen.
What the charges carry
Second-degree forgery is a Class C felony, which carries three to ten years per count. Arkansas also treats false title evidence as a felony. Falsifying a business record is a Class A misdemeanor, and there are 89 of those.
What owners and buyers should take from this
- A new title doesn’t erase the loan. The affidavit says a lender told the DFA it still had a financial interest in one truck after its lien was removed. Washing the lien doesn’t wash the debt. It just adds a felony.
- Check before you hand over keys. A real repossession comes from your lender, and Arkansas law only allows self-help repossession without breaching the peace. Call the lender first. It takes five minutes, and nobody is required to hand keys to whoever shows up with a truck.
- Look hard at abandoned-vehicle titles. If a used car was recently re-titled through a tow yard, pull its title history through a federal NMVTIS provider and confirm the old lien was actually released. If the lender comes after the car, you’re the one stuck arguing over it.
- Padded storage bills have a victim. In the one case police describe, a lender reportedly paid about $7,400 to get a truck back.
Everyone named here is presumed innocent until proven guilty.
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