Car Finance Fraud Is On The Increase – Beware | The Best Car Finance Blog In The World

Car Finance Fraud Is On The Increase – Beware

Thursday, 5. February 2009

Fraud and forgery crime increased by 16% in the 3^rd quarter of last year blamed on the credit crunch. Attention has been drawn towards brokers that arrange mortgages and finance as some of the main culprits helped along by the increasing acceptance of the Internet. As I recently reported things are getting tough for most of us involved in the finance industry and as happened in the last recession desperation forced many brokers to do whatever they could to survive which often caused them to commit illegal acts. I still find it unbelievable that people can complete a finance application giving details of their home, date of birth, bank details and employment details as well as a credit card, then for good measure send over copy bank statements, a copy of their driving licence and even a copy of their passport and copy utility bills. Effectively providing whoever you send the information to with a complete pack for anyone wishing to carry out identity theft. And what clever methods do they use to leverage this information out of gullible consumers? Offer finance rates that are too good to be true. See a low rate and people fall over themselves to get their application in not really knowing who it is going to and what security systems are in place. As happened in Wales in 2007 when an Internet broker, trading for many years offered some BMW X5’s for rentals that none of us could compete with because they were non existent. The directors did a runner with millions of pounds of initial rental money and piles of personal information to be used for fraudulent purposes. Trying to save some money is a priority for most of us at the moment but beware of the crooks, they normally have great web sites and are really lovely people to deal with. As an expert witness for the police I can say that whilst I have seen reports of many lease frauds over the years very few actually go to court as they are hard to prove and the banks and leasing companies don’t want customers to lose confidence in them by admitting that they have been involved in a fraud. So it is up to you to be vigilant and think long and hard if you are offered a deal that seems too good to be true – unless it is me offering it of course. By Graham Hill