just thought i would let you know about this one. I went away to Ireland for a few days, but gota call from one of the guys in the office. Apparently we had a visit from a police sergeant as one of our cars had been involved in a theft in surrey. The driver had an alibi (he was at a customers about 5 minutes from our office with time in and out marked on his call sheet).
Also received a nip today for the same car in bournemouth . It was speeding (presumably to get away from the crime.
So, either one of my staff has completely lost the plot and gone criminal or the car has been cloned. Funnily enough, a month or two ago one of the other engineers was sure he saw the car near him. The driver insisted that he hadnt been there, so i put it down to misreading of the number plate.
It would appear that this car has been cloned and used for naughty purposes. The rascals! I hope this isnt going to be too complicated to sort out. A letter to the dvla is in order.
Im thinking of running on sweepstake on how often the car gets pulled in the next few months.
Its a 2001 silver mondeo.
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start keeping evidence.......you shouldn't have to, but it will help.... e.g. get the driver to note where it is most times ....in a log (if he can be bothered)
furthermore, personalise it a little bit.......e.g. GB sticker on the back, mudflaps... or something that will show it to be different on a speed camera or cctv sytem
report the cloning to police and obtain 1, the officers full details 2, reference number (e.g incident log number or intelligence log reference number)
you don't want the hassle of having to write loads of letters do you
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Be prepared for lots of effort communicating with the authorities.
Friends of ours had their car cloned and found it very time-consuming having to deal with each NIP and ticket, repeatedly.
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Sell car
not worth all the agg
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Take some decent photos of the car especially take the rear numberplate showing any logo on it.
You are then ready to send or email a copy to the NIP boys ( with your crime report #).
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Sell it - it will cost more in time to handle all the post and calls than it's worth.
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Some time ago this happened to an individual who, with written support from his local police, was given a new registration by DVLA. I think some cars are more liable cloning than others. I drive a 5 door 307 and every other one I see on the road is silver, like mine. There must be thousands of us out there - ripe for cloning!
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I was just thinking along the lines of changing the registration of the car. It has to be better than the resulting mail/hassle/selling the car.
The other advantage is that the authorties can pull the cloned car for not having a valid registation. Whether any Police will pick up on that remains doubtfull though.
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Torque means nothing without RPM
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swap the reg with a cheap cherished transfer
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Now, immediately, put distintctive markings on the car, a GB plate, window sticker etc then photograph it and inform the authorities.
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To add to this...
take pic with digital camera, include TODAY's newspaper. Send pic to relevant authorities, keep copy PLUS keep newspaper.
That way you can say "The car has looked like this since 10 May 2007".
Cloning is a problem here - and worse, many drivers return to find their numberplates nicked!
Solution there is to buy the 'other' colour plate -you can have either black on white or balck on yellow plates, and go through the rigmarole of photography, as above.
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Sell it - it will cost more in time to handle all the post and calls than it's worth.
But if the buyer tries to register it and finds that the cloner has already done that, then you might face a new problem of allegedly cloning it yourself.
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But if the buyer tries to register it and finds that the cloner has already done that, then you might face a new problem of allegedly cloning it yourself.
1. i don't follow the point you are making.
2. and how does the cloner sell a car with cloned number plates (presumin that it is made more attractive to a buyer because the cloned plates making it look younger than with the originals) ?
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I heard a case of someone who had his car's identity stolen. When he tried to prove his ownership, he had a hard job proving that his own car was the genuine one, not the cloner's. He found the car had been re-registered to someone else, fictitious, at a false address, and then some other, stolen, car passed off as his and sold on.
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chassis numbers
engine numbers
date build stickers under seats etc
will tell who has the proper car cliff
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This cloning/concealing true identity is becomming a big problem.
We have been trying to trace the owner of a property A in Paddington. We tried contacting the owner via the address listed for the owner at Land Registry, and the 'owner' of that property B rung up to say 'they don't live here, they live at property C'. It struck me that if this owners cars are registeerd in a similar manner - i.e. owner of property B only telling them of 'important' post, they can easily avoid all manner of fines, etc. If you get my gist!
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fortunately my local magistrates take a dim view of failure to disclose and therefore i find the fines metered out quite refreshing to read
specially when you know somebody
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This cloning/concealing true identity is becomming a big problem.
Of course it is. "They" don't seem to realise that the more paperwork and forms of ID they create, the greater the scope for cloning and identity theft. Wait for the headline revelation in five years time that an "unknown" number of identities, backed by ID cards, are not real people at all, but duplicates used for all kinds of tax and benefit fraud.
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