Moves to foil criminals using rented vehicles
VEHICLE rental agencies across South Africa have been forced to tighten their security and vetting procedures as criminals target their cars to commit crimes.
Companies are losing millions of rands each year with their vehicles being impounded for criminal investigations, written off, or stolen by criminals.
In an attempt to limit rental cars being used in crimes, most major rental companies have appointed internal investigation units to assist police with tracking down, preventing and arresting the culprits.
Rental companies, however, have admitted that their vehicles have been used to commit a range of crimes from fraud, armed robberies and hijackings, to burglaries, perlemoen transportation and smuggling of illegal cigarettes.
To combat this trend in Nelson Mandela Bay, the police’s elite vehicle hijacking task team has joined forces with vehicle rental agencies.
The president of the industry oversight body, the Southern African Vehicle Rental and Leasing Association (Savrala), Marc Corcoran, said criminal elements in any billion-rand industry was a constant challenge. But measures had been put in place.
“During the rental process of handing vehicle keys over to a customer, the rental staff will attempt to validate the identification of the renter by visibly inspecting both the driver’s licence and credit card,” he said.
“In addition, the industry largely now also checks electronically the validity of both the credit card and the driver’s licence.
“It is almost impossible at the point of check-out to identify whether the renter is planning to commit any criminal activity.”
Detectives said despite private companies tightening their procedures, criminals were still finding loopholes in the rental agencies’ vetting process by using false credentials linked to stolen identities which were then used to open fraudulent bank accounts.
In most cases the criminals do not return the vehicles but abandon them on the side of the road, prompting the agencies to use the cars’ tracking system to locate overdue vehicles.
Avis operations director Corné Langenhoven confirmed it was a general industry problem.
“There have been cases where we have identified syndicates who specifically use rental cars.
“At one stage, they were using the cars for ATM bombings, robberies and other crimes.
“Because of this, we had to adapt and take counter measures which include a database of all those who have been blacklisted by any rental agency around the world.”
Other measures included using passport scanners to identify fakes, doing background checks on clients, and establishing a special investigation section
Earlier this week, five Italian nationals believed to be linked to the Camorra Mafia – from Naples, Italy – were arrested by the task team together with the Avis special investigation department.
Police suspect the men are part of a national syndicate which sells cheap Chinese drills, generators and chainsaws that have been rebranded with well-known names like Stihl, Bosch and Honda.
The five men are due to appear in the Port Elizabeth Magistrate’s Court today on charges of fraud.
In another incident earlier this month, four men were arrested by undercover police who were waiting at the Avis car park for the men to return their vehicle after committing a spate of crimes throughout the city.
Police spokesman Captain Sandra Janse van Rensburg said rental agencies being targeted by criminals was ongoing.
“Criminals are aware that when they are arrested the vehicles are seized for being used in a crime.
“If it is a hired car it is still impounded and later released to the owners. Detectives take the fingerprints and other evidence from the car before returning it. We fully understand that with the car being held by police the rental company cannot use it to generate money.”