How We Estimated Fraud in Mexico’s Used-Car Market

Before Erilih was a platform, she was a question. In 2023, our team was commissioned to provide data analytics for clients operating in Mexico’s automotive sector. The goal was simple: map pricing trends, buyer behaviour, and regional market dynamics. But as we sifted through thousands of listings, transaction records, and user complaints, a darker pattern emerged. Fraud wasn’t just present—it was pervasive.

Phase One: The Analytics That Sparked a Reckoning

Our initial project focused on identifying pricing anomalies and seller behaviour across online marketplaces. But the deeper we looked, the more we found: listings with inconsistent VINs and falsified ownership documents, vehicles with rolled-back odometers and tampered emissions data, clusters of activity linked to known stolen-parts hubs like Colonia Buenos Aires in CDMX, and a surge in QR code phishing scams and spoofed contact forms during seasonal sales events. We tagged these patterns, cross-referenced them with investigative journalism, watchdog commentary, and anecdotal evidence from consumer forums. What emerged was a chilling synthesis: fraud may affect up to 70% of private online used-car listings in Mexico. This wasn’t a formal statistic—it was a calculated upper-bound estimate, drawn from real-world data and corroborated by field reports. But it was enough to shift our mission.

Phase Two: The Birth of Erilih

We didn’t want to just report the problem. We wanted to solve it. So we built Erilih—not as a marketplace, but as a guardian. A mythic platform designed to illuminate the shadows of the used-car market. Her name evokes clarity, empathy, and protection. Her tools are forged from the very patterns we uncovered: VIN-based legal checks to expose hidden liens and theft, document authenticity scoring to flag forged titles and inspection papers, odometer and emissions integrity alerts to catch tampering, Safe Seller badges to reward transparency, and secure messaging to prevent phishing and impersonation. Erilih isn’t just a product. She’s a response. A lantern in the fog. A system born from data, shaped by myth, and committed to user safety.

Clarifying the Numbers

“Up to 70%” is a synthesised estimate based on investigative reporting, watchdog commentary, and anecdotal evidence. It reflects the upper bound of risk exposure in private online listings. “40% overall fraud rate” is drawn from regional dealership commentary and consumer advocacy reports. It’s often cited as a baseline across both private and dealer sales. “>50% emissions failure” reflects localised data from CDMX’s environmental agencies and anecdotal evidence from inspection centres. It highlights systemic manipulation, especially in older vehicles.