Cars tax direct debits appearing ( unknown cars )

Deniseconfused

My partner sold a car. The person who purchased it was a dealer, but came over as a bit creepy. Transferred money to partners account, partner did the correct transfer with VQ5 etc. all good. 

About two weeks later he notices a direct debit set up for paying DVLA tax for some random vehicle he knows nothing about. Cancels direct debit and thought maybe someone confused a bank account digit. 

Today, then sees another DD about to come out on Monday for another random car. Calls bank, cancels and its reversed: 

Calls DVLA who confirm the car is ( was ) taxed in his name with his bank details. They cancel DD at their end. 

Going to report to action fraud 

Apart from the obvious ..... hoping someone doesn't notice they are paying for your tax, any other reason for a criminal to do this and what to look out for ? 

Nasqueron

The reason is exactly as you say - to get away with not paying for it and hoping you don't notice.
What to look out for - new direct debits set up
Maybe speak to your bank about possible protection from fraud

born_again

Get bank to put a block on further DD's being set up without your permission.

Car_54

AFAIK it should not be possible for anyone except the account holder to set up a DD.

born_again

Car_54 said:

AFAIK it should not be possible for anyone except the account holder to set up a DD.

It is the only type of fraud that can be committed by anyone with sort & account details.

A lot of DD's are set up online. So very easy for a fraudster to do. But is very quickly sorted & refunded by bank.

Remember J Clarkson years ago.

jimjames

Car_54 said:

AFAIK it should not be possible for anyone except the account holder to set up a DD.

It's very easy for anyone to setup a DD with the account and sort code. That's all that's needed. Obviously for some DDs there will be identifying info if it's used to pay off a credit card for example but others might have nothing obvious like this instance.

Deniseconfused said:

Apart from the obvious ..... hoping someone doesn't notice they are paying for your tax, any other reason for a criminal to do this and what to look out for ? 

2 potential parts to it, first like you say the fraud aspect of not needing to pay but secondly it then flags the car as having valid tax and even if the DD is cancelled it takes DVLA a while to contact keeper and update their systems that tax is not paid that the car can drive around for a while still showing as validly taxed which would avoid getting clamped or stopped.

sheramber

I would be concerned as to how these people got your bank details.

bluelad1927

sheramber said:

I would be concerned as to how these people got your bank details.

It says I the OP that hey sold a car yo a dealer who transferred the money

facade

sheramber said:

I would be concerned as to how these people got your bank details.

My water company just gave away the banking details of all their customers to the first hacker who asked nicely. (along with email addresses, street addresses, phone numbers, probably dates of birth and the answer to security questions as well)

They ended up buying us all 12 months worth of credit checking, so everything is fine and dandy now.....

sheramber

bluelad1927 said:

sheramber said:

I would be concerned as to how these people got your bank details.

It says I the OP that hey sold a car yo a dealer who transferred the money

But how did new owners get the bank details?

Are you inferring  the dealer passed the details on?

Bigphil1474

Might be the dealers agreed to set up the DD for road tax for the new owners and either deliberately (or remotely possible accidentally) used the OP's bank details. Maybe they have an auto populate form that they send off to admin to set up road tax DD for buyer and it keeps defaulting to this particular customers details. I'd be on to the dealer if I had details of the cars involved.