We were scammed by car cloning criminals - it's happening all the time

A woman who saved £6,000 for her dream campervan, an 84-year-old who received nine penalty notices for offences she did not commit, and a family whose cars were stolen from outside their home have all fallen victim to car cloning.

The victims of the fraud- where criminals give a stolen car the identity of another almost identical car - say they are shocked at how often it is happening and want to warn other motorists.

Police say they are seeing more cloned cars on the roads, with one officer reporting the number of cases he examines has more than doubled since 2023.

"I kept thinking 'would these people do this to their own mother or aging grandmother?'" said Christine Balson, 84.

James Grimsted, 49, Balson and Caroline Burt, 70, have all been victim to different parts of the scam.

Grimsted's car was stolen, Balson's car was cloned and Burt unknowingly bought a cloned camper van.

Grimsted added: "Talking about it now, it brings back feelings of distaste, disgust.

"I can't believe this is going on, but it is the regularity of it – it is happening all the time."

Cloned vehicles are stolen cars that criminals give a false identity – one that already belongs to another, genuine vehicle – before selling them on privately.

It involves criminals stealing or copying another car's registration plates, changing the car's Vehicle Identification Numbers (VIN), creating fake V5 log books and in some cases, even reprogramming electronic systems.

Many people unwittingly buying them through online platforms and social media.

Police say criminals are adopting increasingly sophisticated methods, making cloned vehicles harder to identify.

Burt, who lives in Weston-super-Mare, said she had saved up £6,000 for her dream campervan.

"I went home, did an HPI check, which I had to pay for. I went on a government website, looked at all the MOTs, they were all in order, it was taxed, insured, MOT all up to date, so I decided to buy it," she said.

Looking back now, she said one of the first red flags was that the seller was insisting on wanting cash only and to meet somewhere other than their home.

A few days after taking the campervan home, she found out it was a clone.

The actual owner was a man from Italy who had bought it three years earlier and still officially owned it.

"I was a little bit naive," Burt said.

"But I didn't know what cloning was. I had never heard of cloning.

"It's so wrong. I'd saved up for something that I really wanted and somebody has just put a number plate from another vehicle on it.

"They shouldn't do it."

Grimsted and his family were away on holiday when they found out their two cars had been stolen from in front of their house in Clevedon.

"We checked on the cameras, the car had moved from its location, we then went through the motion sensor footage for the last 24 hours and we identified two people who were in our driveway with balaclavas on, crowbars and they prized entry into our sash window of our living room," he said.

"My car was later seen on the M5 with a cloned plate, being driven around for whatever purpose.

"I was disgusted, upset, angry. When your personal effects have been stolen, it's indescribable really."

Meanwhile, Balson, from Weston-super-Mare, had the details from her legal car cloned.

She had no idea, until she started receiving multiple fines through the post.

"I got a fixed penalty notice from Transport for London for my car and for a date when I was in Portugal visiting my son and my grandchildren," she said.

"But I realised that the car that's on the fixed penalty notice was not my car.

"It's got the same plates, but my car's got additional lights underneath and parking sensors on the bumper."

The next day Balson got two more fines, and the day after that three more.

In total she received nine fines in just two weeks.

"Whoever was driving this car just hadn't got any kind of moral compass.

"They're just going down bus lanes, parking in residents parking zones, breaking the speed limit, you know, all the things that I naturally don't do."

She fought the fines off, but at 84 said the whole situation was so stressful she decided to get rid of the car.

In Avon and Somerset - the force area that Grimsted, Balson and Burt are all from - the force said it is seeing between 6,000 to 8,000 vehicles a year stolen.

Matt Neale, the force's stolen vehicle examiner, said the high number of car thefts is also being reflected in a rise in the number of cloned cars.

"I'm examining something like two to three cloned vehicles a week, every week now, and that figure is creeping up," he said.

"It's probably double what it was in 2023."

And he is warning criminals are adopting increasingly sophisticated methods.

"In days gone by it would have been a simple case of just changing the number plate on the car because that's what everybody perceives as being the identity," he said.

"But many of these vehicles have had their entire identity changed.

"We're seeing false VIN numbers, replacement labels and even reprogrammed electronic systems so that everything appears legitimate when checked.

"In some cases, even the locks and keys have been replaced."

Neale warned motorists that if you buy a stolen car and it is on a cloned identity, you will end up losing the car and potentially the money you have paid for it.

"It's an awful situation to be in, because for most people, their car is their second most expensive purchase in their lifetime," he said.

"It's the worst part of my day when I have to break that news to somebody."

Police are now warning people to look out for a number of 'red flags' when purchasing a vehicle privately.

These include the selling price being significantly below market value; the seller not being able to produce a log book (V5C); the seller insisting on meeting somewhere other than their home address and requesting cash only.

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