Mr Jaco Grove bought a Volkswagen Polo from a car dealership in eMalahleni. The car dealership sent the vehicle’s papers to be registered in his name and the bank approved the finance.
When Grove went to renew his car licence disc, he was told by the cashier that the vehicle is not on his name and therefore a licence disc could not be issued.
Grove went to a bank, where the financing for the vehicle was done, and according to the system he was no longer the owner of the car although the bank transaction was still in place.
The change was made three months after the vehicle was registered.
“I was then told that my car had been cloned,” said Grove.
A Witbank car dealer took time to explain how the cloning of vehicles is done.
On the Certificate of Registration in Respect of Motor Vehicle a person cannot change anything on the form if they only have access to the Vehicle Register number, however if they get access to the Control Number, they can change anything on the form.
It’s alleged that the car cloning is done either by staff at the Licensing Department or the bank.
There is a Task Team in Kwa-Mhlanga that is dealing with all the Mpumalanga cases of car cloning.
The task team fills out a police document, where the original owner would declare that the vehicle is in the owner’s name, and by showing the vehicle they can do a full check on the vehicle to trace it back to the original owner.
Then a letter will be written to the SAPS in Nelspruit so that a new Certificate of Registration in Respect of Motor Vehicle, with a new Vehicle Register number and a Control number may be issued.
From the date of issue this process is supposed to take 21 days, however this does not happen and a car dealership in eMalahleni has been waiting two months already.
