IDENTITY THEFT HITS VANS
Fish & Chip and other fast food businesses using vans for general use or home delivery use have been warned to look out for possible identity theft.
It appears that van cloning - the vehicle equivalent of identity theft - is on the rise with vans just as much the criminals' target as luxury cars. In fact latest research from 'vehicle provenance expert' HPI confirms that the Ford Transit van is number two in the UK's top ten cloned vehicles. And as the credit crunch takes its toll HPI is urging independent traders shopping for a used van to take steps to avoid being taken in by what seems a great deal, but turns out to be a clone.
Criminals create a 'clone' of a van by stealing the identity from another similar vehicle. They replace the number plates and VIN on their van with the stolen identity from an almost identical vehicle of the same make, model and colour. The Ford Transit, Mercedes Sprinter and Nissan Navara are all high on the sophisticated cloner's shopping list, accounting for 11%, 5% and 4% respectively.
Explains Nick Lindsay, Director of HPI: "Our top ten suggests that it is not just prestige cars, but vans that are today's work horses which offer criminals the greatest rewards. Looking at our analysis we can see that criminals seem to target one model from a particular manufacturer before moving on elsewhere...This has not been helped by further recent news from the DVLA of suspect V5 vehicle registration documents circulating. However, despite this increase, many people are still unaware of the problem and even the police admit they don't know its true scale."
HPI offers a checking service (visit www.hpicheck.com) to help advise buyers in advance of purchases.
Look our for our annual Delivery Service feature in October's edition
of FRY Monthly
