Organised crime syndicates are increasingly using forged identity documents to defraud vehicle dealers, Business Against Crime said on Tuesday.
Head of BAC’s vehicle crime project, Graham Wright, warned that syndicates had become so sophisticated that they were actually renting offices and employing staff to answer incoming telephone enquiries in order to illicitly acquire vehicles.
”By making use of the forged identity documents of individuals with a good credit track record, criminals lease or buy on hire purchase several vehicles at a time and then disappear,” he said.
South Africa’s largest credentials verification company, MIE Resource Services, has also complained that false IDs were turning up in growing numbers.
MIE managing director Ina van der Merwe said that until recently the majority of fraudulent IDs were associated with bogus academic credentials and false CVs.
”Increasingly, however our corporate clients report that these false IDs are being used to defraud retailers and high on the list are high value items such as motor vehicles,” she said.
Last week the Retail Motor Industry issued a warning to accredited vehicle dealers that large crime syndicates were targeting them and using elaborate fraudulent schemes to steal cars.
Jeff Osborne, RMI chief executive, said finance houses were confronted daily with cases of fraudsters attempting to buy cars using false identities.
Osborne said it was common practice for criminals to fraudulently gain access to credit bureau records to find people with a sound repayment record.
”Armed with that information, they forge new IDs in the name of the unlucky victim, clinch the deal and disappear,” he said.
Van der Merwe said confirming the validity of identity documents had also become more difficult thanks to the very low levels of service delivery within the Department of Home Affairs.
”Despite attempts by government to improve the situation at home affairs, it has become very nearly impossible to do our verification checks through them.
”Instead we have to rely on our own database and other government agencies to do these checks,” she said.
She added that more than eight percent of all IDs currently submitted to MIE Resource Services turned out to be bogus.
Recently a syndicate rented offices, leased equipment and hired staff to make it look as if they were running a thriving business.
They then bought 16 bakkies on credit and promptly disappeared. Only three of the vehicles were recovered when they were stopped at border posts.
The remainder were found to have been exchanged for drugs which were in turn sold by another arm of the syndicate.
Despite numerous arrests of home affairs officials on charges of trafficking in identity documents recently, there were indications that ID books were still disappearing, Wright said. ? Sapa