Your car may be a clone
Police and insurance companies have warned motorists about the dangers and criminal implications of a “cloned vehicle”.
A cloned vehicle is when criminals use your vehicle’s particulars such as the registration numbers and duplicate them for use on another vehicle without your knowledge. Cloning is usually done on a vehicle that is similar in make, year, model or even colour to yours.
With the help of corrupt licensing department officials, the cloning process can easily create an identical twin of your vehicle by copying and transferring its details to a stolen car or a car driven by someone else several hundred kilometres away in another town or even in another country. Police are now clamping down on this practice and have taken in a large number of “cloned” vehicles driven fraudulently and under false number plates.
Sources in the police and private security companies described the “cloning” phenomenon as nothing more than an old trick that has been revived by criminals to make money. Police pointed fingers at the vehicle crime underworld, which they claim will stop at nothing to exploit a legitimate system to enrich their criminal enterprise.
According to a private security officer, who said his name is Roger, there are different types of car theft syndicates that operate from bases in townships. He added that although all car thieves are the same, they often differ in their involvement in the car crime trade.
A police officer, who has been involved in a number of anti-crime roadblocks, explained a cloned vehicle is not easily identifiable unless it is stopped at a roadblock and the officers in charge conduct a thorough investigation on the suspected vehicle.
It is normally the inexpensive and inconspicuous low budget, small vehicles targeted for cloning. Some of theses include Toyota Tazz, Toyota Yaris, Toyota Corolla, Toyota Camry, Nissan NP200, Renault, Peugeot and Camry.
According to the police, no vehicle is immune to cloning. It is up to you as a motorist to make sure your investment does not have a cloned twin. You can do this by checking with the local municipality and the traffic department to see if there are unknown traffic fines that have been issued against your vehicle.
