i know a police officer and he told me that if he ran it and it came back goofy it could be a problem and didn't want to put me in that position. back to square one.
You can run the VIN on the CA dmv website to get a list of any back registration fees due and last known smog dates. As mentioned, you can call the DMV and have them run the vin to see if there's any fishiness with the vin #.
That said, there are multiple databases that the VIN should be run against. Since vehicles are registered by state, there are state by state databases that may not all be part of a federal database - or linked together.
I ran into an issue when I moved back to CA and registered my vehicle. Someone had stolen the VIN and used it to register another vehicle in a different state. The DMV employee did not tell me this until the CHP officer arrived to verify that the vehicle was at the DMV and I was the owner. At the time, not all states participated in a linked database (~5 years ago).