Retailers ban vehicle number plates as illegal supply is found

Online retailer Amazon has banned the sale of car number plates on its platform after it exposed its illegal supply by BBC London investigation.

The BBC has discovered that seven companies on the platform are checking customer documents and selling plates without establishing legal qualifications for the plates.

It is illegal for a UK company to provide number plates without physically looking at documents such as driver’s licenses or V5 documents.

Amazon said all seven products from the companies surveyed by the BBC will be removed and sales of all few plates will be stopped away from the novel plates.

The illegal supply allows easy access to a number of plates officially known as vehicle registration plates, allowing criminals to use them for clones.

Cloning license plates involves placing the copied plates on a similarly-looking vehicle. All fines and penalties are then sent to the innocent owner of the original vehicle.

Last year, the BBC revealed that the number of fines cancelled due to car clone incidents in London has increased by 64% over three years.

The BBC purchased Amazon number plates from seven suppliers that top the list on the purchase date. All number plates ordered were delivered without the need for BBC to document.

The BBC found:

Four companies (Defense Line, Domo Corporation, SLS UK Holdings, and Plastic Services) delivered plates without requesting DocumentStwo companies (official plates, Petallica Express). Using a text message requesting that the document be sent to your email address. When the BBC ignored the request, the plate was sent and arrived a few days later

Ruth Cadbury, a Labour MP in Brentford and Isleworth and chairman of the Transport Select Committee, said the BBC’s findings were “very troublesome.”

One of the companies that discovered selling plates without checking the documentation is Wiltshire-based SLS UK Holdings Ltd, which states that it has a “DVLA registered” and has a “Road Legal” numbered plate. It was sold.

The company is run by Jordan Dakin and appeared in Dragon’s Bowl at the age of 18 in 2014, securing £80,000 for a DIY company that is no longer involved with Deborah Meden. Mr. Dakin declined to comment on the BBC’s findings.

Plastic Services is another service that provides BBC number plates without legally necessary checks.

It is also based in Westbury, Wiltshire and operates from the same address as SLS UK Holdings Ltd, it is listed in the DVLA Suppliers Register.

Macauley Bivens, director of plastic services and former business associate and acquaintance of Mr. Dakin, refused to answer questions about the BBC’s findings when approached for comments, both in letters and in person. did.

Defense Line Ltd and Domo Corporation Ltd delivered plates without request to view the documentation. The defense line did not respond to requests for comment, but Domo Corporation declined to comment, saying it needed more information to respond.

Two other companies, Phyfiction Plates Ltd and Meena Supplies Ltd, said they needed an ID, but both sent plates without further requests. Official Plates Ltd declined to comment.

In a statement, Meena Supplies Ltd said: “We take compliance with the law very seriously and are committed to supporting all legal and regulatory requirements regarding the supply of numbers.”

Reg Locker Ltd has followed up the purchases with email addresses or text messages requesting documents via WhatsApp. The BBC ignored the text and the plate was delivered a few days later.

The company said: “Temporary staff clearly have not followed up on text messages requesting compliance documentation.

“All temporary staff will be retrained to prevent such surveillance from happening again.”

From 2021 to 2023, license plate cloning led to amortization of approximately 90,000 penalty fee notices.

Stella Roscoe of Leatherhead, Surrey, learns that her car has been cloned when she receives a police letter saying she is being charged with fleeing the scene of an accident in Ilford. Mrs. Roscoe says she has never been to Ilford.

“If you receive a letter through the door to say you’re going to be charged, it makes you feel bad,” she said.

“You felt like a criminal and I knew I wasn’t there, so I couldn’t understand what this would turn out.”

At the time of the incident, her car was parked in a Leatherhead garage while she was at a nearby event with the other 10 people.

Metropolitan Police accepted that the car’s plates have been cloned, but seven months of insurance claims against her are ongoing.

Ms. Roscoe said she wanted to carry the prison to plate cloning.

Loblattarun, managing director of Hills License Plate, one of the nation’s largest suppliers, said he was not surprised by the BBC’s findings.

“That world of online plate supply has exploded to the point where it was out of control, unfortunately, due to the outdated restrictions on plate supply,” he said.

“The regulations argue that there is a need to physically view the original document.”

Hills is implementing a pilot scheme that demonstrates that a customer can use a digital copy of their ID to prove that they have license plate rights. Other government agencies already do it.

The DVLA stated: “We will work with police and trading standards to take action against suppliers who are not complying with the law.

“Legal suppliers will always ask you to view your ID and qualification documents before selling your license plate. If this does not happen, public members can report this directly to local trading standards.”

Cadbury told the Transportation Commission that the Home Office plans to release a report on the issue of cloning towards the end of last year.

“We’re still waiting for the results of that report. Our understanding has been done a lot of work. I can’t believe the recommendations are too difficult to adopt,” Cudbury said. I did.

The home office states, “The number plate cloning and dirt affects road safety and covers offenders. We will work with the police, the DVLA and other partners to crack down on these crimes.

“We have begun working on our first new road safety strategy for over a decade, aimed at reducing road deaths and preventing related crimes. Details will be shared in time.”