In summary
The California DMV is now allowing vehicle owners to see if the state owes them money for sales of their towed cars.
For years, the California Department of Motor Vehicles has been keeping profits from the sales of towed cars, without giving the owners much of a chance to claim money that’s rightfully theirs.
That’s changing, thanks to a CalMatters investigation.
The state DMV is now offering a lookup tool on its website, allowing people to see if the DMV owes them money from what’s known as a lien sale. The tool is nearly identical to the one CalMatters created for our story in March.
By law, towing companies, storage yards and car repair shops can sell your car to recoup their costs if you do not pick up your vehicle. It’s known as a lien sale.
For poor Californians, the tows and compounding fees are often a trap. Police can tow your car for things like expired registration, but you might not be able to get it back if you can’t renew your registration because you have unpaid fees and fines from things like traffic and parking tickets.
Lien sales have to be approved by the DMV, and any money leftover is supposed to go to the agency. Typically, lien sales end in debt. However, CalMatters found that the DMV collected more than $8 million from nearly 5,300 cars sold at auction between 2016 through the fall of 2024.
Owners are entitled to that surplus, and have up to three years to claim it. But the agency does not notify owners of the refunds.
When our first story ran, the agency said that it wasn’t required to notify people of their refunds, and there was no mention of how people could claim their lien sale refunds. Now, in addition to the lookup tool, there’s a list of frequently asked questions and instructions on exactly how to claim refunds.
The DMV also said it had sent more than $5,000 to a family after admitting it erroneously denied the refund request of Stephen McAllister, who was featured in the CalMatters investigation.
“I wouldn’t have known anything about this money without a call from you,” he said. “I think there’s a lot of people in this same situation, and that money means a lot to them.”
His sister, Joan McAllister’s, vehicle racked up $1,113 in parking tickets in San Francisco in 2022 while she was hospitalized. Stephen said someone found her “wandering the streets.”
Eventually, the vehicle was towed and accumulated over $8,300 in storage fees.
Stephen tried to intervene, but he didn’t have the legal authority. By the time he was appointed as her conservator, the towing yard had sold her car, he said.
McAllister requested a refund from the DMV shortly after our story ran. A few months later, the department denied his request. He reached out to CalMatters, and I contacted the DMV. Agency spokesperson Ronald Ongtoaboc apologized and said the denial was an “error.”
The DMV sent the check to her estate. McAllister, the administrator of the estate, said he recently received the refund.
“I felt like they brushed me off, and that they’re doing it to a lot of people,” he said.
When asked what he would do with the money, McAllister said he planned to donate it to CalMatters.
“I think you guys do really good work,” he said. “I think you could make far better use of that money than I could.”
