Cloned?

[Somebody]

Received a Dart penalty notice charge for the Dartford Crossing. I was nowhere near! I have door bell evidence that I was back home 40 minutes later, but address is not within 40 minutes drive from Dartford.

Anyone had their registration cloned before? Advice please?

I assume first thing to do is to report to the police?

Thanks in advance

[48k]

Somebody said:

Received a Dart penalty notice charge for the Dartford Crossing. I was nowhere near! I have door bell evidence that I was back home 40 minutes later, but address is not within 40 minutes drive from Dartford.

Anyone had their registration cloned before? Advice please?

I assume first thing to do is to report to the police?

Thanks in advance

Is the ticket for the correct registration number and not a simple mis-read ?

[Somebody]

Number plate, make and model on PCN matches exactly.

[48k]

Somebody said:

Number plate, make and model on PCN matches exactly.

Yes I mean is there a photo on the PCN showing the plate and the car so you can check if the reg in the photo has been scanned correctly? If it's a simple misread of the photo by the ANPR system (eg a W in the real reg has been read by the computer as a V) then of course the vehicle details in the PCN will match your car exactly.

If it's definitely a cloned plate then I would just call 101 and notify them.

As for the ticket itself you can appeal it here : https://www.dartford-crossing-charge.service.gov.u...

[Sheepshanks]

Daughter got one of these the other day from the Runcorn Bridge, which she lives about 30 mins away from the bridge but has only driven over it a couple of times.

The photo very clearly shows a G with black headed bolt in the gap - they've intrepreted it as an O.

I guess it's done by a machine but annoying that they're not checked, and it's unfair that if you carelessly forget to pay they get to levy a penalty but when they carelessly churn out PCNs but you can't raise a penalty on them.

[Somebody]

Sheepshanks said:

Daughter got one of these the other day from the Runcorn Bridge, which she lives about 30 mins away from the bridge but has only driven over it a couple of times.

The photo very clearly shows a G with black headed bolt in the gap - they've intrepreted it as an O.

I guess it's done by a machine but annoying that they're not checked, and it's unfair that if you carelessly forget to pay they get to levy a penalty but when they carelessly churn out PCNs but you can't raise a penalty on them.

So is she appealing?

[nordboy]

I had my scooter plate cloned, was being used by someone in london to basically ride around activating every no entry/ bus lane/ speed camera in the Lambeth council area.
Reported to the MET and the DVLA. The MET sent out a letter (well many) with incident numbers but the DVLA didn't want to know. I asked them for a new numberplate, but they refused until a 'full' investigation was conducted.
Meanwhile council penalty notices took up a fair bit of my time. Luckily, although the scooter make was the same, the model and therefore the style was different. So, I ended up drafting a standard letter template and sent it via email to each one. Absolute pain in the bks.
In the end, I bought a personal plate, which immediately put an end to me getting any of it.
I've sold the scooter recently and when I put it back on the original plate, I expected loads of PCN's, but didn't get any, so the little st either got caught by the MET, who placed a marker on their ANPR or hopefully crashed the thing.

the original clone was from when the original owner put it on Autotrader I think. Then they just got a plate made up. It's still far too easy to do.

[Sheepshanks]

Somebody said:

So is she appealing?

Yes, she has done.

[twister]

nordboy said:

I had my scooter plate cloned, was being used by someone in london to basically ride around activating every no entry/ bus lane/ speed camera in the Lambeth council area.
Reported to the MET and the DVLA. The MET sent out a letter (well many) with incident numbers but the DVLA didn't want to know. I asked them for a new numberplate, but they refused until a 'full' investigation was conducted.
Meanwhile council penalty notices took up a fair bit of my time. Luckily, although the scooter make was the same, the model and therefore the style was different. So, I ended up drafting a standard letter template and sent it via email to each one. Absolute pain in the bks.
In the end, I bought a personal plate, which immediately put an end to me getting any of it.
I've sold the scooter recently and when I put it back on the original plate, I expected loads of PCN's, but didn't get any, so the little st either got caught by the MET, who placed a marker on their ANPR or hopefully crashed the thing.

the original clone was from when the original owner put it on Autotrader I think. Then they just got a plate made up. It's still far too easy to do.

When the OH had her plates cloned a couple of years ago by someone who then tripped the ULEZ/CCZ cameras in SE London, we reported it to the Met whos response was basically "sorry guv, can't give you a reference number unless TfL accept your appeal and let us know they also consider the plate to have been cloned".

Looking at the details in the PCNs (one for CCZ, one almost identical one for ULEZ - both generated from the same cameras at the same time, but needing to be treated as two seperate appeals, joy...) it initially felt like it'd be a slam-dunk appeal success given that muppet who'd cloned her plates had managed to get the model and colour right, but almost every other thing that could have been visible in the photos was wrong - different alloys, no tow bar, and no EU flag on the rear plate... How very wrong we were. Took almost a year of increasingly exasperated responses to their continued reticence to accept the evidence we'd supplied to that point before they finally accepted that we were in the right - not sure if they just finally realised we were happy to keep fighting rather than meekly pay up, or if it was some sliver of evidence that tipped the balance in our favour, but my god was it a painful process to prove our innocence there.

And that was just for a single set of PCNs - for whatever reason, the muppet hadn't done anything else dodgy with their car that came back to us - no more CCZ/ULEZ PCNs, no speeding tickets, no bus lane fines, nada. Does rather make you wonder what their actual reason for cloning the plates was, given that the cost of getting the plates made up must have outweighed the savings they made through not paying for that one trip into the CCZ/ULEZ...

Anyway, unsurpringly, despite having reminded TfL numerous times throughout the appeals process that, once they accepted our side of the argument, they needed to let the Met know so we could get that reference number, they managed to somehow forget to do so, and we ended up selling the car not long afterwards (not in response to the cloning, had been planned for a while and just awaiting our finances to click into place) without ever having the cloning formally acknowledged by the Met.

[mgtony]

twister said:

And that was just for a single set of PCNs - for whatever reason, the muppet hadn't done anything else dodgy with their car that came back to us - no more CCZ/ULEZ PCNs, no speeding tickets, no bus lane fines, nada. Does rather make you wonder what their actual reason for cloning the plates was, given that the cost of getting the plates made up must have outweighed the savings they made through not paying for that one trip into the CCZ/ULEZ...

Anyway, unsurpringly, despite having reminded TfL numerous times throughout the appeals process that, once they accepted our side of the argument, they needed to let the Met know so we could get that reference number, they managed to somehow forget to do so, and we ended up selling the car not long afterwards (not in response to the cloning, had been planned for a while and just awaiting our finances to click into place) without ever having the cloning formally acknowledged by the Met.

They'll be saving on insurance/RFL/MOT by driving around with your cloned plates. It's in their interest not to get any fines. As soon as they do, the genuine owner becomes aware of the cloning and it can go onto the police ANPR system.

Re TFL contacting the police to make them aware, I'm sure in the past that if you wanted to claim your car had been cloned to appeal a council ticket, they would ask you for a police crime number first.

[twister]

Ah yes, good point about the other stuff that ANPR picks up on in the other direction - i.e. checking to see the vehicle is legit, as opposed to working out who to send a PCN to... If that's the case then what a crying shame they ruined their cunning scheme.

Maybe different rules for local council Vs TfL - IIRC the reasoning the Met gave was that, because it was TfL raising the PCN, they had to be the ones to confirm that the plates were cloned, even though we as the vehicle owner had all the evidence needed to prove it *shrug*

[Byker28i]

Somebody said:

Sheepshanks said:

Daughter got one of these the other day from the Runcorn Bridge, which she lives about 30 mins away from the bridge but has only driven over it a couple of times.

The photo very clearly shows a G with black headed bolt in the gap - they've intrepreted it as an O.

I guess it's done by a machine but annoying that they're not checked, and it's unfair that if you carelessly forget to pay they get to levy a penalty but when they carelessly churn out PCNs but you can't raise a penalty on them.

So is she appealing?

I sure she's very pretty

[Byker28i]

I've had this twice. about 20 years ago someone cloned our Espace number plate onto a Ford Escort, pretty easy to dispute that one.

Had a strange one last year when I started getting parking tickets for Birmingham for the TVR, seems someone with a Kia Ceed was getting the numberplate read wrong because of spacing/delaminating numberplate

[AndyNetwork]

This car was driving around on cloned plates, that happened to match the plates on one of our company cars

https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/great...

It came to light because it triggered a speed camera at 3am one morning, and our guy had to prove it wasn't him. Took 4 of us looking at the picture, before we realised the "offical" car had an AMG body kit on it, and this one didn't.

While trying to get this sorted, including considering getting a cheap private plate for it, this accident happened.