Police crackdown as motorists land fines in car-cloning scam

POLICE are investigating a spate of "car cloning" crimes which have led to city motorists being wrongly landed with speeding and parking fines.

The "car cloning" gangs steal licence plates to order to attach to stolen cars, which are then often used in crimes such as housebreakings and robberies.

Four motorists have fallen victim to the scam in recent weeks. They only realised they had been targeted when they were wrongly accused of speeding and parking offences, sometimes in English cities they had not visited.

The cases are being investigated as part of Operation Gemini, a special Lothian and Borders Police initiative to target the cloners.

Senior officers warned they expected to find many more unsuspecting victims in the coming months.

The drivers who have fallen prey to the gangs now face being pulled over by police searching for the criminal gangs, as their cars cannot be easily distinguished from the cloned vehicles on the roads.

Police have issued them with a personal identification number and letter to prove their car is their own.

Detectives believe car cloning is far more widespread than most motorists realise and that it is on the rise.

In 2004, a total of 256 registration plates were reported stolen in Lothian and Borders. However, that rose to 406 last year, and 312 were taken in the first seven months of this year.

Police chiefs are urging motorists to report missing plates immediately.

Chief Inspector Kenny Buchanan, of the force's road policing branch, said Operation Gemini had been launched in a bid to tackle the growing problem.

He said: "Some of the vehicles are used for relatively minor crimes, such as speeding, avoiding congestion charges or stealing petrol from garages, but others are used in robberies and other serious offences.

"The owner may receive a speeding ticket from West Yorkshire, for example, and know that they have not been out of Edinburgh for months."

The anti-cloning operation, which started earlier this month, involves a partnership between the police, the car owners and the DVLA.

The cloners target cars of similar type, model and colour to those they have stolen.

Chief Insp Buchanan said: "Gemini is trying to help the car owner. When they discover their vehicle has been cloned, they are given a unique reference number and a letter from the police. If they are stopped by officers looking for the cloned car they can hand over those details and prove it's the genuine article.

"The details of the cloned car will be flagged up and when it's stopped by an officer then the driver will not be able to provide those details. We have identified four cases in the first few weeks, but we expect those numbers to grow as people come forward to us with concerns that it's happened to them."

It is believed that there are 3000 cloned cars on the roads throughout the UK.

The rise in licence-plate thefts has been blamed on suppliers tightening their procedures and making it more difficult for criminals to obtain duplicates.

Bruce Young, Edinburgh and Lothians co-ordinator for the Association of British Drivers, welcomed the police operation. He said: "The pin numbers are a very good idea.

"We would encourage anyone who has had their licence plate stolen to report it to police rather than wait for fines to come in through the post. It can be difficult to prove that you were not responsible for any offences carried out by a cloned car."