It is more common than people assume and normally caused by dealers getting the numbers wrong, we had two Police transits with plates transposed by a main Ford dealer ie one had the equivalent of A123ABC on the front and A124ABC on the back and the other had A124ABC on the front and A123ABC on the rear.
I have dealt with jobs to examine vehicles where dealers had either put the wrong plates on the wrong car or even sent out two cars with the same registration number and it wasn't picked up or best of all two cars the same spec and colour registered by the same dealer with the DVLA and both had the same registration number issued . A glitch in the DVLA computer system meant it was not picked up .
If we got reports similar to this we would first check the person reporting did actually have the correct vehicle and then compare it with the photos of the offending vehicle, usually it was blatantly obvious that they were not the same vehicle but in every case a marker was put on the PNC to have the vehicle bearing the false plates stopped , an ANPR marker was put on the system and a local intelligence marker . If the vehicle had been clocked in a foreign force area then we would inform that force of the vehicle and ask them to place a further marker on their local intelligence system.
If the vehicle involved was the the same colour , model as the genuine one then we would advise the owner of the genuine one to place some kind of unique sticker in a clearly visible location on the front and rear of their car so that if it happened again you could identify the real vehicle on photographs
I have dealt with jobs to examine vehicles where dealers had either put the wrong plates on the wrong car or even sent out two cars with the same registration number and it wasn't picked up or best of all two cars the same spec and colour registered by the same dealer with the DVLA and both had the same registration number issued . A glitch in the DVLA computer system meant it was not picked up .
If we got reports similar to this we would first check the person reporting did actually have the correct vehicle and then compare it with the photos of the offending vehicle, usually it was blatantly obvious that they were not the same vehicle but in every case a marker was put on the PNC to have the vehicle bearing the false plates stopped , an ANPR marker was put on the system and a local intelligence marker . If the vehicle had been clocked in a foreign force area then we would inform that force of the vehicle and ask them to place a further marker on their local intelligence system.
If the vehicle involved was the the same colour , model as the genuine one then we would advise the owner of the genuine one to place some kind of unique sticker in a clearly visible location on the front and rear of their car so that if it happened again you could identify the real vehicle on photographs
