The little-known scam drivers need to watch out for after Wheeler Dealers con
EXCLUSIVE: Drivers could be caught out by a little-known motoring scam after Wheeler Dealers' Mike Brewer was on the receiving end of a major con last month.
A new scam is “easy to fall victim to” with all used car owners warned ahead of buying vehicles for the rest of the summer.
Sally Foote, Chief Commercial Officer at motoring experts Carwow claimed scammers will try to change the Vehicle Registration Number (VRN) to get away with fraud.
Chassis numbers could also be altered to make stolen cars harder to track later down the line.
The warning comes after Wheeler Dealers host Mike Brewer was caught out by a major motoring con last month.
The host of the classic car TV series believed he had sold a Volkswagen Golf GTD until it emerged the buyer had used fake details.
The scam emerged despite Mike admitting his One Automotive team had undergone extensive checks to determine whether the buyer was legitimate.
Speaking exclusively to Express.co.uk, Sally said: “When inspecting the car for any visible damage, dig deeper and ensure the history of the car checks out.
“Don’t just check the bodywork though look into the plates and the logos used.
“Scammers often do a bad job of replicating real logos on a VRN (Vehicle Registration Number).”
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According to TopReg, car cloning is a “prevalent problem” simply because it is “relatively easy to copy a number plate”.
Meanwhile, Sally told Express.co.uk: “The chassis number can be easy to counterfeit. Scammers know this and it’s easy to fall victim to this unless you know what the ‘real’ chassis number looks like.
“If you can, find a real chassis number for the manufacturer to compare on collection. If you can, dig around for any other printed chassis numbers to check they are all the same.”
CarVertical stressed falsifying a VIN code “can be as easy as it is to replace a plate containing this code on the vehicle”.
Scammers who want to tamper with the vehicle’s identification number simply have to replace all of the original plates identifying the VIN number on the model.
However, owners of older cars could be more at risk with VIN’s “relatively simple” to forge on models built before 1980.
