A 24-year-old car cloning victim has told how he ended up dreading the morning post after fines demanding thousands of pounds started to pour through his letterbox.
Cambridgeshire-based Eathan Cooper received his first fine last summer for a bus lane violation in Essex while on a trip to Madrid, in Spain.
Since then, Mr Cooper, who works in sales, has wrongly received dozens of other penalties for parking, speeding and driving through bus lanes.
Transport for London (TfL) said it had cancelled six Ulez penalties it issued after confirming Mr Cooper had been a victim of car cloning.
What is car cloning?
- Car cloning involves criminals stealing or copying another car's registration plates, often choosing plates from a similar looking vehicle
- The scam involves criminals using another person's registration plates and running up fines and penalties which then land on their unsuspecting victims, who only realise there is an issue when the fines start arriving
- The Met Police urges people who suspect their vehicle registration has been cloned to report it
- The Met says once reported, those affected can then contact the organisation that issued the fine, explain the vehicle has been cloned, that police have been informed, request cancellation and send supporting evidence if available
Mr Cooper, who lives in Sawtry near Huntingdon, said he started to dread the morning post after the fines started arriving at his home.
He is sharing his story in the wake of a BBC investigation which revealed a 64% surge in car cloning in London over a three year period.
Although the letters were all addressed to him, and related to a car with his vehicle registration, all of the penalties were issued for incidents in places he had not been to.
"I was in Madrid when my younger brother first called me to say a letter had come through for me," Mr Cooper said. "He opened it up and it was a bus lane ticket."
The ticket was issued for an alleged traffic violation during the middle of the night in Essex, more than an hour away from his home.
"We couldn't understand what had happened," said Mr Cooper, whose car was parked at home in Sawtry over 70 miles away at the time.
The fines kept coming in for alleged contraventions across London and Essex.
All of the fines relate to a black BMW that looks exactly the same as his on automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) cameras and has the same vehicle registration.
