CLONE SOARS More gangs faking car plates
CAR cloning has doubled in a year – with nearly 5,000 cases in only eight months.
Gangs copy number plates and use the fake identity to sell or drive similar cars that have been stolen or salvaged.
Criminals can rack up speeding and parking fines knowing they y will go to someone else. Others fill up with fuel and leave without paying. ying.
In one case a man paid £17,000 17,000 cash for a Range Rover Evoque voque – only for police to tow it away after finding it was a clone. e.
And one woman had a county ounty court judgment against her r for somebody else’s parking fine – despite CCTV showing a different car.
Cleaner Lisa Jones, 39, of Wrexham, said: “It’s not fair I’m getting all this hassle for something I haven’t done.”
DVLA stats obtained by BBC Radio 4 show 4,800 cars were cloned between last April and December, compared with 2,600 for all of the previous year.
West Midlands police and crime commissioner David Jamieson says it’s too easy to buy and sell plates and wants the Govern Government to tighten regulations.
He said: “Disreputable people are gettin getting materials to make the plates or the they are being ordered online.
“Th “They should not be able to do that. M Manufacturers should make numbe number plates when they put them
on very difficult to lever off.”