Bought Stolen Car in Good Faith - what options I have? Pls help

konark

Mr.Generous wrote: »

A £12k car for £9k sounds too good to be true.

...........It was.

Takmon

tirfk wrote: »

Its 12reg Audi Q5 9grand
Insurance wants 11grand
Met him at v5c registered address.
Finalised deal after couple of days cash sale.
Hpi check came clear and v5c doc legit.
Apparently it was stolen few months ago.
Its cat X and its real market value is around £12

If you do a proper HPI check it does tell you to also enter the VIN number into the check and this would have alerted you to it being a cloned car, if the VIN check came back correct then they would have covered you for this.

The VIN number is usually in several different places on the car so if you check a few of them to make sure they match then check the VIN against the number plate on an HPI check then your covered no matter what happens.

Obviously this won't help you now but may in the future and could help other people reading this. But i'm always surprised when people hand over £9k cash to a stranger and don't carry out the proper checks!.

Quentin

tirfk wrote: »

......can you pls post some info which will be useful to me pls?
Thank you

There's no info that will help you get out of this if that's what you are after(

(Your only faint hope is that the criminal is caught, has funds and you can get restitution)

Penelopa.Pitstop

So how come police is taking away some cars and in other cases car stays with new owner (we had that story on the forum before)?

Herzlos

I think the one that was kept by the owner was a gray area since one car was traded legitimately (for a stolen car) and subsequently had a lot of work done.

Mr.Generous wrote: »

To get the V5 at the address he must have at least access to the property

Yeah that's an interesting point - did you go into the property or buy it from the driveway?
Either way it means the scammer knows a lot about the car/property/owner since they'd have needed to either fake up the V5, or meet you at the property at a time the real car and owner were away.



But presumably you've explained all of this to the police.

DoaM

Penelopa.Pitstop wrote: »

So how come police is taking away some cars and in other cases car stays with new owner (we had that story on the forum before)?

Are you confusing a "bought a stolen (cloned) vehicle" scenario with a "bought a vehicle which actually belonged to a finance company" scenario? There have been a few of the latter on this board.

tirfk

I bought a stolen vehicle which was cloned to a legit vehicle. Now it belongs to insurance company as the insurance company has paid out the original owner of this stolen car about few months ago. Now am trying to negotiate with the insurance company who have the car and they bluntly said they want the original market value of the car. If i intend to shell out original market value- why would I buy from them, rather buy from some dealer this time (ofcourse I dont have any funds to do that) I asked them if I can pay around 4 grand will they let me have the car. They bluntly said not a penny less than 11 grand. I said I cannot afford, you can keep the car.

foxy-stoat

tirfk wrote: »

I bought a stolen vehicle which was cloned to a legit vehicle. Now it belongs to insurance company as the insurance company has paid out the original owner of this stolen car about few months ago. Now am trying to negotiate with the insurance company who have the car and they bluntly said they want the original market value of the car. If i intend to shell out original market value- why would I buy from them, rather buy from some dealer this time (ofcourse I dont have any funds to do that) I asked them if I can pay around 4 grand will they let me have the car. They bluntly said not a penny less than 11 grand. I said I cannot afford, you can keep the car.

As is their right as the people who have good title.

Reality it will be sold by an auction and as it is registered as a Cat X it will be worth a lot less than market value - but not £4,000 though....probably double that.

Your better off trying to find the scum that sold it to you and collect the money that is yours. Post up photos, names, phone numbers on local Facebook groups and see if you get a hit.

Deneb

Takmon wrote: »

If you do a proper HPI check it does tell you to also enter the VIN number into the check and this would have alerted you to it being a cloned car, if the VIN check came back correct then they would have covered you for this.

The VIN number is usually in several different places on the car so if you check a few of them to make sure they match then check the VIN against the number plate on an HPI check then your covered no matter what happens.

Obviously this won't help you now but may in the future and could help other people reading this. But i'm always surprised when people hand over £9k cash to a stranger and don't carry out the proper checks!.

You are confusing cloned number plates with a cloned car. A car on cloned number plates will still have its genuine VIN, and the VIN will not match the plates.

A cloned car will have had its VIN altered to match the identity of the vehicle that the number plates purport it to be.

Sometimes this is very easy to spot if you know what you are supposed to be looking at, as one quick dirty method is just to stick a printed bit of paper over the original stamped VIN, and stick on very poor quality forged VIN labels. Unfortunately prospective purchasers aren't always that clued up, and if the false VIN matches what is on their HPI print, as far as they are concerned it passes muster.

At the other extreme are cars where the stamped VIN is a genuine and original stamping, carefully cut out of the donor car and grafted into the stolen car after removal of the stolen car's original VIN. Match that with quality forged VIN labels which are often difficult for an expert to determine at a glance, and sometimes even reprogramming of the electronic VIN stored in various ECUs on the vehicle, and you have a proper clone.

Penelopa.Pitstop

DoaM wrote: »

Are you confusing a "bought a stolen (cloned) vehicle" scenario with a "bought a vehicle which actually belonged to a finance company" scenario? There have been a few of the latter on this board.

No, I'm not confusing scenarios. Couple of months ago was a long story how someone can't get back his stolen car. It was mentioned by other poster already.