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[Wittsend]

That's an interesting point about a cherished number - would perps bother cloning a cherished number plate

 

[RobS]

That's an interesting point about a cherished number - would perps bother cloning a cherished number plate

 

I think it stands out more, certainly if it's one of these pool cars that get used for drugs etc. I'm not sure how they got the plate in the first place as we've not been to Manchester in that car.

[Genem]

^^^^ As an aside, about 9pm last sat a large pile of rubbish appeared, partly in a layby, partly in the field on a neighbours farm. Bags of vegetable matter, cardboard packaging, rusty office chairs....

The Police inspected the fly-tipping and pronounced that it was the refuse from a Cannabis farm... The Council came on Tuesday and cleared it away, having given notice that they would only clear stuff from the layby.... magically all the stuff in the field seems to have migrated the 20ft into the layby overnight :-)

Urban crime does reach out here into the wilds !! 

[gvo416j R.I.P.]

Back in May my brother had the trailer number plate nicked off his trailer one night while staying in a hotel down south somewhere near Milton Keynes. A similar discovery has used it to fill up with diesel and leave without paying 4 times so far in Kent and Essex - luckily he has always been able to show he was nowhere near the service stations at the time they were hit, but as said ^^^^ it is all hassle he could do without.

[Smokey 11a]

Back in the 80's I ran several petrol stations. One lunch time at the largest the guy who ran the car sales attached had a big problem. His wife arrived to fill her Mercedes with fuel, then his Mistress who come over from Paris turned up surprise him she was in a XJS  V12 both had ths same no plate GTS1.
Fortunately wife had gone to the toilet and I was able to whisk the mistress away. Forward on a few months, Wife ran off with his nest door neighbor, mistresses moved in with him, Further on by many years. It was snowing and had a few cars stuck where i was playing in the snow. I'd pulled a few cars back onto the road and got to a Mercedes est that was well and truly stick. Managed to get it back on the road when I received a hug from the female driver, saying you don't remember me do you? Turns out she was the mistress who I removed from the forecourt.   

[Genem]

^^^^ The old Military Toast "Wives and Girlfriends", with its Reply, "May they never meet !"

 

[Herald1360]

I think it stands out more, certainly if it's one of these pool cars that get used for drugs etc. I'm not sure how they got the plate in the first place as we've not been to Manchester in that car.

Just look on Ebay or other car ads for a close match to the vehicle that'll wear the cloned plate?

[GlenAnderson]

Just look on Ebay or other car ads for a close match to the vehicle that'll wear the cloned plate?

I was chatting with a mate, retired Met, about this a while ago. Apparently it depends what you’re trying to do. Serious criminals need something that will pass first inspection on PNC or ANPR, so need to find a car identity that is a close match for the vehicle they have and is taxed, insured and MoT’d, so they use Google street view until they find a car the same make/model/colour. Pick a town far enough away that you’ll unlikely end up inadvertently parked next to each other, but close enough to be legitimately passing through. They then have a set of duplicate plates made up using either stolen blanks or ones without the proper markings.

People that just want to temporarily obscure the identity of their vehicle in order to nick fuel are more like to physically alter the plates they already have; to change an F or L to an E, P to R, C to O, S to 8 etc. with black tape. Stealing number plates from trailers falls into this category, but only gets the herberts one yellow plate, and with the amount of CCTV these days that’s not enough.

[GlenAnderson]

There used to be a bloke in the Dartford area years ago that had LEV15 and LEV1S, which caused some local amusement.

I did some work, many years ago, for a colourful character/chancer that had a very “laissez faire” attitude to which plates and which tax discs went on which vehicle. He also had some fairly questionable attitudes to parts on his customers vehicles and sources of secondhand spares. I cut short our dealings when it became apparent just how far over the line he went, and it did finally catch up with him; thankfully long after our paths had ceased to cross.

[Peter Holden]

I remember a cas in the press a number of years ago.

A guy in Liverpool had the identity of his red fiesta cloned and he was having creat difficulty proving he wasnt responsible for all the violations linked to his reg.  Until a violation was caught on camera whilst the police were at his home interviewing him with the car on his drive.

Result all the violations against him were cancelled and the Police got DVLA to issue a new registration for his car.  Good luck with getting DVLA to do that now.

Peter