Number plates pinched for stolen cars

By JO-MARIE BROWN and CHRIS DANIELS

Thieves are targeting car dealers and vehicles parked on streets at night to swap legitimate number plates with those from stolen cars.

Police are warning car dealers and owners of cars to be wary of what they say has become a common problem.

The warning comes after an Auckland man was shocked to see the number plates from his stolen Subaru Legacy on another vehicle in a car dealer's yard.

Mike Fale's car was stolen from outside his Grey Lynn home two weeks ago and he recognised the plates last Sunday on the same make and model of a vehicle for sale at a Grey Lynn car yard.

Police seized the plates and discovered that they had been swapped while the vehicle was parked on the lot.

Detective Callum McNeill, of the Auckland car squad, said swapping plates was a short-term measure used by thieves to disguise a stolen car's identity.

Plates were also swapped with those from privately owned vehicles parked on city streets but car dealerships provided easy access to vehicles of similar makes and models to those stolen, he said.

"Anyone can walk in there because a lot of them don't have gates or anything like that.

"If you're working in a car yard and you've got all these cars, you can't remember exactly what each plate is supposed to be," he said.

"It's not until you actually do the paperwork to maybe sell the car that they think, hang on a minute, and that happens quite a bit."

Private owners were also vulnerable because many did not know their own number plates off by heart, Detective McNeill said.

People should always check the plate number when returning to their car. If plates have been swapped, they should phone police immediately to help track down the stolen vehicle.

A worker at the Grey Lynn car firm said management had no idea that the plates had been swapped until police phoned.

It was the first time it had happened.

The worker said the thieves were using a clever trick because most car yards would be unaware of any switch in number plates until they sold the vehicle and checked their computer records.

Other car dealers contacted yesterday were not aware that plate-swapping occurred.

One manager, who did not want his dealership identified, said that if car thieves were changing plates, not much could be done to stop them.

"The only thing you could do is to take all the plates off the cars and that would be a nightmare."

The executive director of the Motor Vehicle Dealers Institute, Steve Downes, said the issue of number-plate swapping had not been raised with him.

Car dealers did have the problem of how far to go in securing their yards.

Dealers wanted people to be able to wander through a yard after hours, looking at vehicles before making a decision to buy, so high fences and gates were unpopular.

Many yards were under video surveillance and vehicles were usually immobilised to stop them from being stolen.

A common problem for car dealers in past years was the theft of vehicle registration stickers, which were fixed to the outside of windscreens.