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How to sort your plates being cloned (parking fine)?
B0bbyEwing
Forumite 762 Posts
in Motoring
Parking fine now, speeding later, involved in a hit & run the week after no doubt.
Located in a place I had to use Google Maps to see where it even was.
Photos provided show the plates match but this bogus car has black alloys - legit car has silver. Bogus car has a rear wiper, legit car has a stump where it used to be, bogus car looks like it's been debadged, legit car has badges at the rear.
Who do you contact in this case? Those issuing the fine? The police?
Anyone been in this position? If it's the police then are they generally useless & come with the attitude of maybe you changed your wheels, broke your rear wiper after the offence & removed your badges afterwards too or are they actually helpful?
Located in a place I had to use Google Maps to see where it even was.
Photos provided show the plates match but this bogus car has black alloys - legit car has silver. Bogus car has a rear wiper, legit car has a stump where it used to be, bogus car looks like it's been debadged, legit car has badges at the rear.
Who do you contact in this case? Those issuing the fine? The police?
Anyone been in this position? If it's the police then are they generally useless & come with the attitude of maybe you changed your wheels, broke your rear wiper after the offence & removed your badges afterwards too or are they actually helpful?
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Inform the DVLA who should update your vehicle's record and then contact the police who can update the intelligence/markers on vehicle registration and put info on to stop vehicle to check documents and drivers. They could record a crime of fraud as it's potentially causing you a loss and them a gain of sorts. They're unlikely to investigate it though if no evidence of offender and potentially not proportionate.
They should issue a crime number which you will need when dealing with any fine issuers.
It happened to me and it's a pain.
I kept getting non payment of congestion charge notices, around 3 a week for about 6 weeks.
The car in the images were almost identical to mine, same model, same colour, same wheels. The only different was mine had a towbar and the ball poked up over the rear number plate slightly.
Each time I had to make contact and supply the crime number, all fines were quashed pretty much instantly once I read them the crime number but you might want to try and collect some evidence of where you were in the meantime.
Most smartphones will have GPS location data and store where you (your phone) was, like Google Maps Timelines.
Now contact DVLA and report that your plates have been cloned to them.
They will record this on their system so it flags up to anyone requesting the keeper details on that reg number in case anyone else requests keeper details of your vehicle.
It doesn't usually last too long, the scrote's know they have tripped cameras or racked up the odd fine and they know you'll report the problem to the police so they won't want to chance it too long.
I admit possibly not the most moneysaving way to go but wondering if it might be a solution if it ever happened.
Years ago one of our car plates was cloned
Got parking tickets often during the time we were at work and car in works car-park
We stated the above and could provide evidence that the car owner worked for the NHS
and could prove they were at work and the car was in in the car park works one.
I guess they checked the APNR etc and noted we were on one side of london and the clone 25 miles away on the other side and never heard from them again
If a cloned car is involved in an accident, a good police officer will look at all the evidence how the car differs not just the wheels and on older cars there are often tell-tale signs so you have nothing to worry about
At times cloning may be a genuine mistake via a misread or nuber plate done wrong as happened to my nephew on his new car. About 10 years ago he was stopped by cops as he was only about 20 and looked 16 driving a brand new Fiesta sports and they follwed him and noted number did not match car. They had the new car for about 2/3 weeks. The number was not that of a black ford fiesta but a red nissan micra I think - he told them car was new and number plate had the dealers name etc on it - they told him to get it sorted same day he did, no fine etc, so mistakes happen
Yeah if you changed your plates to private ones then the old registration would stop being used. It's usually held in reserve so that if you take the private plate off you'll get the old number back.
Anyone using the old number once it was de-registered would have it flag up in ANPR as not valid.
These days as ANPR cams all over the place can help an innocent person like the example I gave
It happened to me last year. Very easy to disprove as the cars were different colours and one look at the V5 by an actual human being tells you which is genuine.