Used car buyers are being advised to check the vehicle they are purchasing is not cloned.
Car cloning is the vehicle equivalent of identity fraud – criminals steal a car and give it a new identity copied from a similar make and model vehicle already on the road.
The criminal disguises the unique 17 digit Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) on the stolen car and uses a stolen V5/logbook to try to legitimise its identity.
Second-hand car sales check company HPI has said buyers only need to follow four simple steps to avoid being scammed by unscrupulous sellers.
One. Always check the provenance/history of the car, and make sure you view it at the registered keepers address (as shown on the V5/logbook). Buyers should ensure all the VIN/chassis numbers on the vehicle match each other and then use the HPI Check to ensure they tally with the details as recorded with the DVLA.
Two. Know the car’s market value. If you are paying less than 70% of the market price for a vehicle, then be on your guard. No seller will want to lose money on their sale. There is rarely such a thing as a bargain, especially if the car later turns out to be a clone.
Three. Don’t pay with cash, particularly if the car is costing you more than £3,000. Some cloners will take a bankers draft as part payment, because the cash part is sufficient profit without ever cashing the bankers draft. Most crooks selling cloned cars would rather walk away from a sale than take a payment that could be traced back to them. Despite strong advice to buyers to pay via the banking system, HPI still hears of many buyers who go on to pay in cash and subsequently find out that the car is a clone, and that they’ve lost both their money and the vehicle.
Four. Check the vehicle’s V5/logbook. Stolen V5 documents are still being used to accompany cloned vehicles.
As an added security measure, the HPI Check continues to include a unique stolen V5 document check as standard.
This will confirm whether or not the document is one that the DVLA have recorded as stolen.