Car fraudFake number plates, fake Vin plates and fake V5Cs

'Big money in stealing prestige cars' – DI Young

Organised car crime

The other end of the legal scale is organised car crime. 

Detective Inspector Will Young runs a team of investigators in the Metropolitan Police’s Stolen Vehicle Unit. Outlining the challenges they face, he said: ‘Between 85 and 100 vehicles are reported stolen in London every day. We recover around half, but the use to which the missing cars are put varies.

'Many are used for petty crime, but there’s big money in stealing prestige (mostly German) cars for cloning and/or export.’

'Even though London’s most stolen car is still the Ford Fiesta – which usually isn’t the target of organised crooks – the big-value targets tend to be prestige German cars such as top-end BMWs, Mercedes, Audis and Porsches. 

'Luxury 4x4s such as Range Rovers are also targeted, especially for export. But some other luxury brands such as Lexus are rarely targeted.’

‘The ringleaders aren’t casual thieves – they are highly organised – usually stealing to order. But they rely on the bottom end of the criminal world to help them. 

'They will have target models on their list and then pay a petty crook to burgle the house for the keys. The money they pay at this end of the spectrum is small; the burglars might be doing it to pay for their next drug fix. 

'Even if we catch the burglars, it’s very difficult to link these people to the ringleaders. And if we don’t catch them, once the keys are in the hands of the car thieves, the vehicles can be swiped, cloned and either sold on or shipped overseas very quickly and efficiently.

His team told us how professional criminals obtain the necessary extras prior to taking the car – the keys, V5C (registration document), false number plates and fake vehicle identification number (Vin) plates. 

For obvious reasons we can’t disclose the details, but these cars are usually stolen to order after obtaining the keys through burglary or through a third party.

Read the Which? guide to avoiding car crime and the Which? guide to the best car security features.

Weak UK car registration system

DI Young points out the sophistication of such crimes and the weaknesses in the current car registration system: ‘Keys are stolen from owners’ houses, or occasionally their pockets. So your front door may be the weakest link.

‘And V5C forms are too easily obtained. Fakes can easily be purchased for around £200, while a genuine V5C sells for about £500 it seems [several hundred thousand blank V5Cs were stolen from the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) in 2007/08]. 

'When we were first alerted of the theft of blank V5Cs from the DVLA, it sounded like a few hundred had been stolen, but as more came to light, we went back with the serial numbers and DVLA confirmed these were also in the stolen batch. We still don’t know the exact number of stolen log books out there, but I estimate it’s into six figures.

DI Young showed us some of the cars the Stolen Vehicle Unit retrieved from some very organised criminals based in London. 

He also showed us a range of different blank Vin plates the unit has seized, to suit all makes of car and which were ready to have false numbers etched onto them prior to being installed in a stolen car. 

'Forged Vin plates that can fool the best experts are readily available to organised gangs,’ DI Young said.

Alan Bishop, industry relations director for car history checking company HPI, shared his experiences: ‘In the war against the unscrupulous, the motor industry has worked hard to improve the quality and accuracy of the data it holds on used cars. 

'Inevitably, this has made selling a stolen vehicle without changing its identity all but impossible, hence the rise in car cloning. Despite this increase, many people are still unaware of the problem and even the police admit they don’t know its true scale.

'This has not been helped by news from the DVLA that suspect V5C vehicle registration documents are still in circulation.'