If Your Car Was Towed and Auctioned in California, the DMV May Be Holding Your Money. It Won't Tell You.

If your car was towed in California in the last three years and you never got it back, check one thing tonight: whether the DMV is sitting on money that belongs to you. All it takes is a plate number, and nobody is going to remind you.

Where the money comes from

When you can’t pay the tow and storage bill, the yard can sell the car at what’s called a lien sale. The yard keeps what it’s owed plus a processing cost capped at $70, or $100 if the car was worth more than $4,000. That’s Civil Code section 3073.

Whatever’s left over goes to the DMV.

Most sales don’t cover the fees, so most owners are owed nothing. But plenty do. CalMatters found the DMV collected more than $8 million from nearly 5,300 auctioned cars between 2016 and fall 2024. By our math, that’s about $1,500 a car.

Here’s what they don’t tell you. State law doesn’t require the DMV to tell you the money exists. And section 3073 says the DMV “shall not honor any claim unless the claim has been filed within three years.” Miss that, and the money stays in the state’s Motor Vehicle Account for good.

The fix that got vetoed

State Sen. Kelly Seyarto, a Murrieta Republican, carried SB 1029 after a CalMatters investigation. As first written, it would have made the DMV notify you within 14 days of getting your surplus. That part was amended out. What reached the governor would have moved money nobody claimed in three years to the state Controller, to be handled like any other unclaimed property.

Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed it on September 30. He wrote that he supports “helping vehicle owners recover excess proceeds that rightfully belong to them,” but that the bill “divides responsibility between two state agencies without establishing a clear process.” He pointed to the DMV’s online lookup tool instead.

The tool is real and it’s useful. It’s also the only notice you’re going to get.

Our verdict: the state holds money it knows belongs to specific people, doesn’t have to tell them, and keeps it after three years. That’s a bad deal for anyone who got towed in a rough month. Since the fix died, the job falls to you.

Check this now

Go to the DMV’s Lien Sale Excess Fees Lookup. Search by your plate or the last five digits of your VIN. It covers the last three years and updates on the second business day of each month, so search again next month if a recent sale isn’t showing.

If you’re owed money, fill out the DMV’s Application for Refund, form ADM 399, and mail it with your supporting documents to the address on that page. You still qualify if you’ve since sold the car or lost track of it, as long as you were the registered owner when the fee was paid.

The check goes to the address tied to your vehicle, usually 4 to 6 weeks after approval. If you’ve moved, update your address with the DMV before you file.

Then run the plate for anyone you know who lost a car to a tow yard. A parent, an ex, a roommate who moved out. The clock is the same for them.

If the tow followed a crash, storage fees run on a different clock with your insurer, and it starts sooner than you think. See how the storage fee clock works on a total loss. More on keeping your car costs down at our auto insurance hub.

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