A bewildered mother has had to prove her innocence after thieves cloned her number plate and slapped it on a car that crashed hundreds of miles away.
Shelli Birkett, from Herne Bay, in Kent, only realised what had happened when her insurance company told her she had been in an accident in Liverpool.
The artist and designer has never been to the city in her life but said she ‘had to fight’ to prove she was not on Merseyside at the time of the crash.
‘I said it wasn’t me but they asked me to prove my whereabouts and to send photos of the condition of my car, and they continued to investigate.
‘Then I remembered I could use my Google locations and luckily on that day I was in Herne Bay and I posted some videos on my business page on social media, proving I was at work that day,’ she told BBC South East.
But it wasn’t just her number plate that was copied, the thieves had also used the same make of car.
The case was only closed on the ‘scary’ experience when Ms Birkett was able to prove her location was not at the scene of the crime.
Despite this she still received letters from the insurance company’s lawyers asking for settlement money.
Shelli Birkett (pictured) has had to prove her innocence after thieves cloned her number plate and crashed a car in a city she had never been to
The car crash was in Liverpool, 280 miles away from her home in Kent – but she only realised after her insurance company told her she had been in an accident on the northern city
But it wasn’t just her number plate that was copied, the thieves had also used the same make of car
The scam involves criminals stealing genuine number plates and even modeling them on the same make of car to dodge being caught while the real owner of the plates racks up hefty penalties, said the motoring organisation RAC.
Often they locate number plates to clone online, for example via images on car buying and selling websites.
Drivers caught with a cloned number plate, could face a fine of up to £1,000 and potentially penalty points on a licence.
Car owners received nearly 10,000 penalty notices in 2023 on vehicles they had no connection with after their plates were cloned.
There was a 26 per cent increase in reported number plate cloning last year – and a 689 per cent increase since 2013.
In 2013 a total of 1,248 people contacted the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency about correspondence, fines or penalties for their vehicles as a result of cloning.
But by 2022, that number had jumped to 7,837 cases and one year later it had skyrocketed to 9,850 cases, a freedom of information by Car Wow revealed.
Illegal number plate cloning has also been blamed on drivers trying to avoid paying penalties for older polluting cars.
Reports of cars being wrongly linked to fines for driving in ‘clean air’ or ‘low-emissions’ zones have shot up, suggesting more and more rogue motorists are fitting fake plates to cheat city centre enforcement cameras.
The mother, from Herne Bay, said she ‘had to fight’ to prove she was not in the city at the time and had never been to Liverpool in her life
The case was closed when Ms Birkett was able to prove her location was not at the scene of the crime
Birmingham, London and Bath have led the way on green zones. Bristol’s clean air zone charge older cars £9 and HGVs, buses and coaches £100.
Ch Supt Rob Marsh from Kent Police said: ‘In relation to number plate thefts, people are clearly using them to commit other crimes such as whether it’s to avoid congestion charging, other road toll fees, whether it’s to do with making off without paying for fuel.
‘With the increases in the cost of living that can sometimes be a reason for people to engage in criminality of this type.
‘If someone wakes up in the morning, and their number plate is missing, they know they’ve been a victim of crime.
‘If the number plate has, unbeknown to the victim been cloned, we’ve got to wait for it to trigger an ANPR camera linked to another incident and then it would come to our attention and we would then start our investigation.’
The Home Office said: ‘The cloning and defacing of number plates affects road safety and provides cover for criminals. We are working with the police, the DVLA and other partners to crack down on these crimes.
‘We began work on a new Road Safety Strategy, the first in over a decade, which aims to reduce road deaths and prevent related crime. More details will be shared in due course.’
