It says right there in the article, the DMV employee would go and pick the cars he wanted every so often. Which implies there were more cars that were under app

It says right there in the article, the DMV employee would go and pick the cars he wanted every so often. Which implies there were more cars that were under appraised and sold to other people, the DMV employee just picked some for himself every so often. This payment was for looking the other way when the towing company would obviously try to under appraise a car.