Don’t let criminals cash in on car scams

With fresh headlines hitting the news on used car buyers in Scotland falling foul of fraudsters selling on stolen cars, leading vehicle information expert HPI is warning buyers to be on their guard. Before parting with any cash HPI says apply the following rule of thumb – ‘always pay by cheque or banker’s draft, especially if the car is costing more than £3000’.

Organised criminals scammed six motorists in the Lothians out of tens of thousands of pounds after selling them high-value stolen vehicles. All cases involved the swindlers using stolen DVLA V5s to accompany stolen vehicles that had had their identity changed to match that of a similar legitimate vehicle. This practice is known as cloning and is the vehicle equivalent of identity fraud. The criminals disguise the unique 17 digit Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) on the stolen cars, as well as using a stolen V5 to try to legitimise its identity.

“However, simply paying for the car through the banking system could out smart a criminal,” explains Nick Lindsay, Director of HPI. “Most crooks selling cloned cars would rather walk away from a sale than take a payment that could be traced back to them. Our advice is don’t pay for your purchase with a substantial amount of cash, particularly if the car is costing you more than £3,000. Whilst some cloners will take a bankers draft as part payment, because the cash part is sufficient profit without ever cashing the bankers draft, most will actually walk away.“

The HPI Check is the industry’s number one weapon in the battle against car crime. It includes a unique stolen V5 document check as standard, which will confirm whether or not the document is one that the DVLA has notified HPI as being recorded as stolen from them.

The HPI Check will also reveal whether the car is registered as stolen with the police, has been written-off by an insurance company, or has outstanding finance against it, and it protects buyers with the HPI Guarantee. The HPI Guarantee provides up to £30,000 financial reimbursement in the event of the car not being everything it seems – including a clone – or the data held by HPI being inaccurate at the time of the check being conducted. A condition of the HPI Guarantee is that a buyer must not have paid cash in part of full for the vehicle if it cost more than £3000.

Concludes Nick Lindsay: “We strongly advise buyers to take three simple but vital measures. Always buy from the registered keeper's address, don't pay less than 70% of the market value and pay via the banking system. Yet despite giving this advice, we still hear of unsuspecting members of the public buying cloned cars and suffering significant losses when the vehicles are then found to be stolen and recovered by the police.”

An HPI Check is available online at hpicheck.com.