When car thieves steal a vehicle, the biggest danger to them is the number plate: Police cars have built-in automatic numberplate scanners, which can tell if a vehicle has been stolen or not. To counter this, they can replace the number-plate with another plate. Of course, if the police is doing random checks, and the plate says the car is a red Ford Mondeo, but the vehicle it is mounted on is a white Mercedes, they are going to stop the car and ask some question.

In response car criminals replace the plates on the stolen car with the same number plate as a similar vehicle. When the police then run number-plate checks, it looks as if the vehicle is genuine, and chances are that the criminals get away, even after close brushes with the police. The stolen cars are either taken into normal use by the criminals, sold on with false documents, or used to commit other crimes, such as getaway vehicles, ram-raids or similar.

Activities can range from relatively low level - getting away without paying for parking tickets, speeding fines or driving off a petrol station forecourt without paying but they can also be used in more serious crimes including organised crime and potentially, terrorist activity.

what to do if your car has been cloned

Go to the police right away and make sure you  get a crime number. Unfortunately, there is not a lot they can do immediately, but at least they will add you to a database of known cloned numbers. This means that you could end up being pulled over by the police every now and again, but as you are, at least you would be in the knowledge that your false-numberplate-toting alter-ego would face the same predicament: But if they get stopped, they are heading for the courtroom.

If you are receiving a particularly violent barrage of unpaid parking tickets from a particular area, the police are likely to start scouting that general area for the cloned car, hopefully catching the criminals in the process.

The punishment for driving with a cloned car is severe: A cloned vehicle will not have a valid tax disc, no (or invalid) insurance, no (or forged) registration document, no MOT, and the likelihood of other crimes (stolen car, speeding, document forgery etc) are also present.

acquiring false number-plates is too easy

In normal circumstances, if you wanted to buy a new number plate for your car, you would need to produce a log book, driver's license and proof of address. The problem is that there are services out there that allow you to buy a set of plates without any identification, either in person, over the phone, or over the internet. Thanks to a loophole in the law that allows Internet companies to sell replica registration plates under the stipulation that they are not to be used as real number plates, there are now more sophisticated ways to steal a car's identity. The police say that one of the biggest problems are unscrupulous dealers who take cash under the table to make number plates for the car criminals.

Of course, with this method, the most frightening aspect is that as there is no need to actually touch the original car, there is no indication at all that cloning has taken place. Many people have only discovered that they are a victim of this crime when they have suddenly started to receive parking tickets for places they haven't been, or other fines or endorsements that have nothing to do with them.

As the onus is on them to prove their innocence, many victims have been left in the difficult situation of paying up or letting the issue go to court, simply because they cannot prove it wasn't them who carried out the infringement.

Wendy Rowe, boss of leading vehicle security company Retainagroup explains:

"The owner of a cloned car who receives fines, charges, penalty points or is accused of stealing fuel or involvement in more serious crimes has the difficult task of proving that he or she is innocent. I wonder how many have simply accepted a fine or penalty points rather than challenge the system?

"If the car is used as a getaway vehicle or in a ram raid, there will be a further victim of the original crime. And if you're unfortunate enough to 'buy' a cloned vehicle, you'll find that you don't own it and that you can say goodbye to the money. Even a vehicle provenance check will not necessarily reveal a clone."

According to the BBC, new cases of cloned vehicles are reported daily, and an estimated 10,000 cars are now on the roads of England. The biggest problem is that there is no legislation restrict the sale of number plates.

For a possible solution, the UK government could look across the channel. In other countries in Europe, such as Norway, a different system is in use: Number plates are stamped out of metal (instead of using a movable-lettering system), which means they are a lot more difficult to forge. In addition, issuing original number plates is done exclusively by a government agency not unlike the DVLA, under strict control, rather than by private companies.

best advice

• Make it hard for them to get your registration plates. Invest in some clutch-head screws that make them more difficult to steal or purchase a set of the new anti-theft plates that break when unscrewed. These plates will be available on the market soon and make the plates useless to thieves.
• If you suspect your number plates are stolen, make sure you report it to the police immediately and get a crime reference number. This will prove that you reported the theft should your car be cloned and your registration be used at a later date.
• If you are unlucky enough to get a ticket or a demand for something you didn't do, or somewhere you haven't been, challenge it, and report it to the authorities/police. Keep a diary of where you were on days and times in case it happens again. Make a fuss and don't back down if you know you are innocent.
  

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