11:19 am, September 13, 2024
A motor trader has called for tighter protection after his company’s identity was cloned to create a scam website.
Kenneth Bates, of Sutton Coldfield, runs Cocasa Ltd, which buys and sells cars within the motor trade, including to large dealer group’s such as Sytner.
However, the outfit doesn’t have a website or a public sales wing, making it an ideal target for opportunistic scammers.
Fraudsters, believed to have links in Lithuania, copied his company name and Companies House profile to set up a fake website containing bogus listings.
Car Dealer has reported on several similar scams in recent years, with comparable schemes popping up all over the UK.
The dealerships are set up by sophisticated criminals who clone businesses, which are often dormant, by copying details from Companies House accounts, including addresses and director names, and set up scam websites with the same details.
They then rip ads from legitimate sources, slash the prices and wait for unsuspecting customers to fall into their trap.
In Bates’s case, he says he has received multiple contacts from ‘customers’ to the fake site, with one man even showing up on his doorstep.
He told Car Dealer that he reported the case to the police but was passed between various fraud agencies without any action being taken.
He says he was even told by one officer that the fraud couldn’t be treated as a crime unless a victim came forward and that he – Bates – didn’t qualify as he hadn’t lost out financially.
Speaking about his experience, Bates told Car Dealer: ‘They’ve picked me deliberately because I’ve not got a website to compare it to.
‘They have looked for a 20-year established business, which I am, with a half-sensible address so anybody that goes on the site thinks “Oh, they’ve been going 20 years, it says so on Companies House. It’s all right to pay him a deposit”.
‘I had one guy knock on my door and ask “Are you Kenneth?” I said “You’re looking for a camper aren’t you because the only person who calls me Kenneth is my mum when I’ve done something wrong!”.
‘I told him that according to what’s apparently my website I had 66 campers and 33 caravans. I just said “Please say you haven’t paid them any money”.
‘Thankfully, he hadn’t because they wouldn’t let him come and look at it first, but he just kept coming back to saying “But it was so cheap”.
‘In fairness to him, he was okay, but he was on my drive for 20 minutes. I just kept telling him that it’s easy to be cheap when they don’t exist!’
He added: ‘I’ve rung the police but they don’t want to know and have just bumped me one way and then another.
‘Because apparently nobody has been hurt, there is no case to answer and the police won’t report it as a crime.
‘I just think that’s bulls**t because my identity has been stolen and that is a crime in itself. But I’ve been told that it’s only when they’ve nicked my identity and used it to nick somebody’s money that it becomes a crime.
‘The police are supposed to protect you from crime, not just wait for it to happen to you.
‘One copper even told me that it was a trading standards issue! This is not a misdescription. It’s fraud.
‘I have been getting really stuck in with this because I know how nasty these things can turn.
‘I am concerned that someone is going to turn up on my doorstep, having paid for a £50,000 camper, and won’t listen to reason.
‘We’re going to end up rolling around on the floor and at that point I won’t need a policeman, I’ll need an ambulance!’
‘Too good to be true’
Bates said the scam website included several clues that it wasn’t genuine but he warned that most people wouldn’t notice them.
Subtle hints include a lack of any corporate identity, poor grammar and prices well below the average market rate.
Car Dealer attempted to call the number listed on the scam site but received no response. Since then, the page has been closed for ‘maintenance’.
Bates said: ‘If you go through the website, as I did, you can start to tear it to pieces.
‘The grammar is wrong. Nobody says they live in England except for when you’re abroad. They also say “lots of people visit our website fairly daily”.
‘Which is it? You either visit a website fairly often or daily. You don’t visit it fairly daily.
‘They’ve got a huge selection of adverts too, which is too good to be true.
‘If you look through the ads, they all have different backgrounds. If I was running an operation of that size, I would have a proper corporate identity and they’d all be photographed the same way.
‘If you look through the windows of the caravans, you can even see the sea in some of them, which is unlikely when you’re based in Sutton Coldfield!’
Action Fraud, the UK’s national reporting centre for fraud and cyber crime, has previously told Car Dealer it advises the public to follow the advice of the Take Five to Stop Fraud campaign to keep themselves safe from fraud.
This includes:
- Stop: Taking a moment to stop and think before parting with your money or information could keep you safe.
- Challenge: Could it be fake? It’s okay to reject, refuse or ignore any requests. Only criminals will try to rush or panic you.
- Protect: If you think you’ve been a victim of fraud, contact your bank immediately and report it to Action Fraud online at actionfraud.police.uk or by calling 0300 123 2040. In Scotland, call Police Scotland on 101.
West Midlands Police was unable to comment when approached by Car Dealer.
If you have information about a scam car dealership website, get in touch using the ‘Email us’ button at the bottom of this story.
