A criminal cloned my number plate and racked up £260 in fines

Someone has cloned my car’s number plates and is driving around London racking up ultra-low emission zone (Ulez) charges and fines — while my car is safely parked in my driveway.
I live in Maidstone, Kent, but I often drive to London to visit family. My car, a silver Mercedes Benz, is not Ulez-compliant, so every time I drive into the city I have to pay the £12.50 daily charge. I’ve set up a direct debit so that the charges come out of my bank account automatically.
When I logged onto my Transport for London (TfL) account at the end of February to check my account, I found I had been charged for six journeys I had never made, totalling £75.
I called TfL to query the charges because I had driven to London only once that month. I was told that the car that made the extra trips had the same number plate and was also a silver Mercedes, but a different model to mine. I realised that someone must have cloned my plates.
TfL told me to file a complaint to appeal against the charges and report what had happened to the police. Three weeks later I logged into my account again. I had been charged for an extra five trips, totalling £62.50. I also had a £130 penalty charge notice (PCN) from Ealing council for driving in a bus lane — but I wasn’t even in London at that time.
Thankfully, I have had the PCN overturned but it has been over a month now and TfL has not said whether the charges for the extra journeys will be wiped. At the moment, I am £137.50 down.
Can you help me? I don’t want to cancel my direct debits to TfL because if I miss a genuine trip I’ve made, I will get a fine which will be a hassle to resolve. I’m also worried about getting extra fines from the cloned plates, for example for speeding.Innocent Menezes, Maidstone
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Having your plates stolen or cloned can be a nightmare. You usually won’t have any idea it has happened until fines start arriving through the post, and you may be threatened with court action or get points on your licence.
It is difficult to prove that your car has been cloned — you will need evidence that your car is not the same one that has committed the offence. CCTV can help, but there is no guarantee that there are cameras in your area — even if you can provide video, it still may not be enough.
Criminals clone plates for a variety of reasons. It may be as simple as a way to avoid parking, speeding or congestion charges, but it may also be because they want to avoid being detected for more serious crimes. They will often choose plates from a car that looks like theirs, which is probably why this criminal targeted your silver Mercedes.
In 2022, some 14,799 London congestion and ultra-low emission zone (Ulez) charges were cancelled because of car cloning, according to TfL data — up from 6,005 the year before.
After a month of waiting you were keen to know whether TfL would wipe your charges and luckily when I asked for an update it apologised for the delay and refunded all charges.
TfL said: “We are sorry that Mr Menezes has been a victim of vehicle cloning. We apologise for the delay.”
You have reported this to the police, but you also need to tell Action Fraud and the DVLA about what has happened, providing evidence and the crime reference number for your case. It is also highly advisable that you change your number plates immediately because this should stop more fraudulent fines or charges against you.
To help keep your registration plate from being cloned — never post pictures of your car on social media and hide your number plates if you are selling your vehicle on sites such as AutoTrader or Facebook Marketplace.
• My widowed sister’s 18-month battle with O2
When I cancelled a holiday through Tui, it told me that I would be able to keep most of my deposit. But now it has backtracked on this agreement and I wondered if you could help.
I was due to fly out to Lake Garda on August 28, but I called up to cancel it well in advance in June. I had just come back from another holiday in Italy and had a nightmare flying experience.
I have a condition that means it is painful for me to stand for long periods of time. At Naples airport I was in a standing-only queue for passport controls for an hour and a half and I was also queuing for a long time at Edinburgh airport on the return flight.
It really put me off going on another holiday for a while, so I rang Tui to cancel. I was expecting to lose my £400 deposit, but Tui told me that I could keep £300 to put towards another holiday if I paid a £100 booking fee.
Great news, I thought. Three days later I had an email that said my holiday had been cancelled, but with no acknowledgement that a £100 booking fee had been taken and no indication of where my £300 was. I phoned Tui to confirm our agreement, but was told that it would not be honoured. I wrote a further two times to complain, but Tui is not budging.Gordon Maclean, Edinburgh
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Tui’s version of events differs from yours, but I asked it to take another look.
It said that when you called to cancel the trip, you were told that if you amended the booking by changing it to a later date the full £400 could be put towards another holiday. You said that you would think about it, according to Tui.
It then cancelled your holiday because the payments for your holiday were overdue, not because of any agreement that had been made over the phone. It sounds like there was a misunderstanding, but Tui has agreed to send you a £400 voucher so that you can go ahead and plan another holiday.
A spokesman said: “We were very sorry to hear of Mr Maclean’s situation with his holiday deposit. We have been in touch directly and we’re happy to report that the situation has now been resolved.”
If you want to cancel a holiday it is important to know what type of trip you have booked.
If you have booked a package holiday, you will normally have to pay a cancellation fee that generally goes up the closer you get to the departure date. The company should only charge you for the amount it will lose, but if you think that you are being overcharged, ask for a breakdown of costs.
You have less protection if your trip is not a package holiday. Whether you will get a refund will usually depend on the terms and conditions of your booking, which is why it’s a good idea if you are doing a DIY holiday to book accommodation with flexible terms or, even better, free cancellation. If you book without these options, you may be able to get money back through your travel insurance, but you will only be covered if the cancellation is because of a medical reason.
If you have a money problem that you would like us to investigate, email [email protected]. Please include a phone number.