The head of the Garda's Stolen Car Squad has appealed to the State's insurance companies to ensure written-off cars are fully scrapped and not sold on after being taken off the road. Ian Noctor reports.
It follows the recovery last week of €200,000 worth of cars which had been stolen to order to match the identity of scrapped cars which had been bought after being written off by insurers, a process known as "ringing".
Sgt Finbar Garland says of the 30,000 cars stolen annually, over 2,000 are never recovered. Many are shipped abroad, but up to half of them are sold on in Ireland through private sellers.
"We can take anything up to 1,000 cars a year from people who genuinely did not know the car they bought had been stolen. If insurance companies dispose of written-off cars for once and for all, then the problem would be greatly reduced. Not for the first time I'm calling on the insurance industry to take these cars out of the system."
Cloning the identity of a car is a relatively straightforward activity for unscrupulous gangs. Every new car is has its own unique vehicle identification number (VIN), which is displayed on either a small metal plate or a sticker, found either on the driver's door or in the engine bay and stamped onto the vehicle's chassis. This number acts like the car's fingerprint and allows the gardaí to access certain information about the car, including whether or not it's stolen. By forging VIN plates and chassis numbers taken from vehicles written-off in accidents, thieves are able to pass off stolen cars as genuine.
Because of the increasingly effective anti-theft deterrents being installed by manufacturers, car thieves have had to become more ingenious in how they steal cars. The preferred method now is to break into the home of the car owner and simply steal their keys. Sgt Garland says: "We're blue in the face from telling people not to leave their keys on the hall table or a key rack. Thieves who've been stalking your car will either break in at night and steal just the keys or use a fishing rod through your letter box to hook the keys and steal your car."
Many "ringers" are sold, either privately or through car dealers, to unsuspecting buyers - and these people are hit hardest by this crime. Once the deal is done it's usually too late - they have no way of getting their money back and, as the car does not legally belong to them, it will be taken away and returned to the original owner or sold as "salvage" to recoup losses to insurers.