S3 TAKEN OFF ME!! WHAT CAN I DO???

ash_s3

ash_s3

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I feel sick!
Just picked my girlfriend up and went for a meal, parked my S3 in the high street. All of a sudden got a call off my mate - "where are you, theres police all around your car!" so i headed back to find 3 cop cars and a helicopter hovering over my car!
Turns out the car is stolen!! and was stolen 3 years ago.
Ive had the car a year now, and they said the tracker had been picked up at various points in the day and the helicopter followed it to where it was parked.

Theyve taken the car off me and gave me a lift home!
Paid cash for the car, what can i do? have i got any comebacks?

said it was stolen in derby and thats where i bought it from, basicaly my reg and chassis numbers have been put onto a stolen car, the chassis number under the bonnet just fell out when the police officer poked it, was fibreglassed on!!
 
jesus ash thats harsh......

it seemed a bit dodgy to me when you postd this thread a while back:
http://www.audi-sport.net/vb/showthread.php?t=35487

imported, colour change, AND interest from the financial services people..... didnt seem right.

seriously harsh that its stolen though! and 3 years ago? what has the tracker been doing sinse then! did you even know it had a tracker?

feck. i dont know where you stand, but best of luck mate!
 
Ah yes, I remember that thread.

Unfortunately, as you are not the owner, you have no comeback I'm afraid.

Its one of those things, but you've lost the car and basically have no way of getting anything back.

Buyer Beware and all that.

That said, now the cars been stolen for so long, I bet the owner doesnt want it back and they'll have had an insurance payout, so ask the police to pass on a message to owner and make them an offer to let you keep it/get it rightfully transferred.
 
Ouch! Presumably you HPI'd it before you bought it, so they should be the ones compensating you.
They will either give you the market value or the amount needed to buy the car back from the insurers.
 
i feel for you man, the cars probably owned by the insurance company now.
 
Hi sorry to hear about your misfortune.

If you did pay for HPI, or had a company warrant it was sound then they should be able to compensate the loss (market value).
HPI's are normally provided to garantee the car is not stolen / written off / finance etc. In your case with it been stolen you should be covered.
 
Im so sorry to hear this, my girl friend works for HPI checking cars, caravans and other stealable things all day, and she says it is "Alarming" how many cars are stollen, or have been a write off, and the buyer is completely unaware. She even gets a lot of people HPI checking thier cars after buying thm and then finding they are a write off etc..

Hope every thing gets sorted mate. :3sadwalk:
 
also if it was bought at an auction, the fee covers the HPI which protects every car they sell. Even £50 shitters
 
Actually re-reading it, the car you bought was cloned, so the reg & chassis number were actually legit, albeit someone elses, so I'm guessing an HPI check would have been clean (apart from the outstanding finance) which I'm also guessing puts them in the clear.
With my limited knowledge of Tracker devices, aren't they activated remotely i.e. when the car is reported stolen, so if the car is kept underground or out of range in another country then the system cannot activate it. Presumably then Tracker do regular activations on unrecovered vehicles to see if anything surfaces and this could be why it's only just come to light.
On the Tracker subject, what's the benefit to the owner of a vehicle to have a Tracker installed apart from the obvious lower insurance premium (which I doubt would cover the yearly subscription)?
1. Do you actually want your stolen car back?
2. Presumably the compensation Tracker pay out if they can't recover the vehicle goes to the insurance company anyway.
Sorry to go off at a tangent.
 
thats terrible, sorry to hear, where did you buy it? from a private seller? a dealer?
 
thanks everyone

car was bought privately, with cash.
Hpi wouldnt have bought anything up as Andymac says the rec / chassis numbers were from a legit vehicle.
Police say it now belongs to the insurance company (dont know which one)
they said i might be able to buy it back off insurance but i dont know if i want it back now i know its history.
They say all the mods are mine aslong as i can prove i bought them, got receipts for evrything except the wheels as i bought them off a mate.

Just feel so gutted now, was looking to sell the S3 and use the cash as a house deposit, kinda ****** all that up now. Still own money on my bank loan that i used to buy the car in the 1st place!
 
What I don't understand in all this, if the car had been stolen three years ago then why has it taken so long for the authorities to do anything?

Hopefully, you'll wake up tomorrow and be the victim of an Ashton Kutcher style prank, and it turns out you've been had. However unlikely that may seem.
 
So basically HPI doesn't provide any cover for cloned vehicles, it's still down to the buyer to spot any obvious clues as to the identity change (fat chance if it's done well).
On the basis that cloning is the single biggest car crime problem in the UK you'd think HPI could verify if the seller is the owner easily enough, without disclosing any details. i.e. I call them about a car I'm about to buy and give them the sellers details, they can then say whether they match or not. It's not rocket science.
 
As said, the Tracker system can only be activated if the car is in range. Cloners keep stolen cars underground or in containers and presumably after a period of time Tracker stop trying to activate the system (as there must be a bandwidth limit of the number of activations they can do simultaneously). Maybe they then give it a go on the anniversary of the theft just to see if it's surfaced and unfortunately for Ash it did.
Ash, what happened with the DVLA, do they have you down as the owner on the V5, or have you just got a forged V5 and DVLA still have the legit S3 owners details? Does the owner of the cloned car know he's been cloned?
In this day & age I think the onus should be on the manufacturers to make cloning slightly trickier than filing off chassis numbers and changing number plates. Why can't the DIS show the reg number on startup? It's pathetic when you think about it, all that technology and we still rely on easily forged details to prove a vehicles legit.
 
It does seem kind of weird, surely when ownership exchanged, a V5 was submitted. I understand you would have recieved a new V5 with your details on ? what happens with the other car ? is his car also registered to you ?. Does the DVLA not question the fact that they have two cars with the same chassis, reg but are different colours ?
 
Yeah i am the legal owner of the car W907 RNE - but this reg and chassis number didnt belong on my car. Its so confusing.
Trackers are de-ativated if you dont pay the subscription charge so maybe insurance companies just ask tracker to turn a few on just to try and re-coup some of their losses (as said before)
The V5 i had was genuine as it came through the post from DVLA.
The officer said HPi will tell you if its stolen on the original reg etc but not if its been cloned/ringed

Where do i start!
 
if you have a v5 then someone had to send of the new owners form from the original.
If you bought it without a valid v5 you were asking for trouble
the hpi should have listed the current owner, as should the v5, if they don;t match then smells funny.
what did you get with the car? log book, V5, service record, should all point to the cloned vehicle and not the donor. If the donor was silver, the hpi should have detailed that as well

sounds very unlucky
 
I'm going to be completely honest here and say what everyone was thinking.

If you bought it without a proper HPI check (and that would have listed colour) and a V5, then really, its no-ones fault but your own.

Live and learn.
 
I know that the VIN is recorded in the 8P as VAG-COM will list it at the top of a Auto-Scan and I thought that the VIN is stored in the cluster on Imob-3 cars.

So it will get more difficult although I suppose that the criminals will just have to get high tech and hack the systems to change the stored VIN.

Sorry about the loss of your motor.

Paul
 
colour change has nothing to do with it as HPi says the colour was changed before the car was 1st registered.
car didnt come with the full V5, just the green slip because the person i bought it off didnt have the car for long (took it as px)

The car WAS HPi'd, but this wont tell you the car has been ringed like i said before

thanks
Ash
 
Pic of the chassis number if anyones interested:

Looks obvious now but you couldnt tell when it was behind the plastic cover.

dsc00029.jpg
 
Dave_Bayern said:
I'm going to be completely honest here and say what everyone was thinking.

If you bought it without a proper HPI check (and that would have listed colour) and a V5, then really, its no-ones fault but your own.

Live and learn.
Click to expand...

You're missing a big point here though, an HPi check wouldn't have thrown up anything dodgy about the car(and he did do an HPi check) as it is a cloned car and DVLA have the information about the colour change so it would have seemed legit, and he bought it with a V5 document, and had a valid V5 document sent to him from the DVLA. I think he's just a victim of a very organised crime and a very disorganised DVLA. DVLA should have picked up on the fact that the same car had 2 owners.

I had a run in with the DVLA with my previous car when they failed to send me a road tax renewal notice. When I contacted them, they said they didn't send me one, because they sent one to someone in London with exactly the same car as mine, same colour, same reg. They then checked, and confirmed that I owned the legit car, and the one in London was a clone, but on their database, both cars were V5'd with different owners. So, an HPi check isn't as faultless as you think, and the DVLA are as useful as a waterproof teabag.
 
how did the guy have a green V5 form?
 
I would be asking some serious questions of the DVLA on this one
 
jcb said:
how did the guy have a green V5 form?
Click to expand...

Very easily! The DVLA had issued 2 V5's to 2 different people for my previous car. 1 to me(the legit owner of the legit car) and 1 to the owner of a cloned car. And I'm not talking about years ago before the advent of computers or anything, I talking 2 years ago!

Ash, I'd be beating down doors at the DVLA if I was you. They made a cloned car seem legit by their ineptitude. They should have flagged it up as dodgy the minute the same car appeared to have 2 owners.
 
Thanks for understanding!
Thinking of going to see citizens advice or a solicitor, would that be a good idea?

Thanks
 
Citizens advice would be a good start(at least it won't cost you), and then possibly a solicitor if they won't help, or for a second opinion. As good as citizens advice is, they're not gonna give your case as much attention as a good solicitor will.

By the way, have the police mentioned anything about possible proceedings against yourself? I know it would be massively unjust, but at the end of the day you were in possesion of stolen property, so legally speaking they do have grounds to instigate proceedings against you. No doubt the CPS would drop any charges as it would be blatently unjust, but crazier things have happened when it comes to DVLA/Police/CPS(insert any other government department here).
 
Sorry to hear what has happened, Ash. Unfortunately it is the same old 'Caveat Emptor' (spelling???) - buyer beware.

I have a very low opinion of HPI checks having fallen foul of them myself when my car was shown as clear by HPI yet was still registered as stolen on the DVLA database. My car was stolen and recovered, so I did an HPI check a couple of months after it was recovered to make sure that the insurance company had cleared all the paperwork up correctly. It passed the HPI check without a problem. Six months later I applied to put a personal plate onto the car and DVLA said no you can't - the car is showing as stolen.

I did ask how the HPI check was clear yet the DVLA computer still showed it as stolen but HPI just fobbed me off with a load of excuses so vowed never to line their pockets with another £40 of my money ever again.

You are better off paying the DVLA a couple of quid for a list of all the previous cars owners and then getting in contact with them directly and asking about the car's history.
 
So gutted for you, can't believe this is still possible in this day and age, I too would be banging on the door of the DVLA.

This suddenly makes paying dealers extortionate prices seem worthwhile - at least there would be some comeback.

Genuinely hope everything turns out well for you, as others have mentioned maybe the insurance company will take a sympathetic view and sell you the car for a reasonable price - not ideal but better than the alternative. DVLA should be prepared to tell you which insurance company has the car.
 
Can i ask for a list of previous owners?
Police said no charges will be made against me as i didn't know anything about it. Its a pain in the *** that its going back and forwards between different police areas. (shrewsbury and derby)

Going to go and see the citizens advice people today, see what comes of it. My mate who owns a local garage says i need to add up everything ive spent on the car and try and de-value it to the insurance company as the wheels, intercooler, suspension, etc etc are all legally mine. then if the insurance company think itl be too much hassle to replace all my mods then therye more than likely to sell it back to me.

Ive heard there is some sort of fund that insurance companies or the police etc all pay a bit into to help pay like compensation for victims of crime. Will ask citizens advice bout this also.

Thanks for the help everyone, just trying to put on a happy face!

Ash
 
Just bought my Audi, loving it, and would be gutted to lose it!

Anyway, I had the same problem with no V5 (Bar the slip stamped cherished number plate). Bought it off an independent at his home, but leaned toward not-trusting him. The car made me think otherwise, so I understand how easy it is to get sucked in) Phoned every person under the sun, and even got a letter from the lexus dealer that received the car as trade, before purchasing. Received the v5 yesteday, but this makes me worry again...sorry mate! Gutted for ya!

Get yourself a good solicitor, the time elapsed may work in your favour!
 
ash_s3 said:
Its a pain in the *** that its going back and forwards between different police areas. (shrewsbury and derby)

Going to go and see the citizens advice people today, see what comes of it. My mate who owns a local garage says i need to add up everything ive spent on the car and try and de-value it to the insurance company as the wheels, intercooler, suspension, etc etc are all legally mine. then if the insurance company think itl be too much hassle to replace all my mods then therye more than likely to sell it back to me.

Ive heard there is some sort of fund that insurance companies or the police etc all pay a bit into to help pay like compensation for victims of crime. Will ask citizens advice bout this also.
Click to expand...

Sounds like a complete and utter ball-ache, am really sorry for you. Also sounds like you've really grown attached to the car, even with now knowing its true history. Can't believe there is no come-back for the DVLA, after-all, they're the guys who are supposed to keep an eye out for this sort of thing. Perharps their computers are really only programmed with one function... "We don't care who really owns the car... even if seems two people own the same one... find everyone who's not paid road tax". Actually that's a good point, something should have registered when the 'single' car appeared to be being taxed twice in a year?!

Hope it all works out, keep us posted, will be interesting to find out what happens.
 
This is a **** situation..so sorry to hear about this. Im sure tere must be something you can do. Dont give up easily, make sure you speak to a solicitor too. You paid legit cash for it, and the "stolen" car must have been paid out by insurance by now. dont confront the person you bought it off yet, till youve got all your ammo, then fire it at him all in one go.
good luck
 
"Actually that's a good point, something should have registered when the 'single' car appeared to be being taxed twice in a year?!"

You'd think so, but would they care about getting 2 for the price of one?
 
Okay, stupid question and statement time....
Firstly, I wouldn't worry about the car's history if you can swing getting it back. You're obviously very happy with it and should remain so (I'm assuming it's a straight car and wasn't cloned as part of a ringing exercise).
Now that it's been found, surely it can't remain on the register as stolen (so if you do manage to get it back, it'll be a clear legit car).
I'm presuming that you're going to co-operate with the Police and provide them with the seller's info? I did this once for a clocked car on the previso that they waited to arrest the seller until I had my dosh and part ex back, unfortunately the muppets visited him first and although I got my part ex back, the refund was a little short and I was 'encouraged' to leave before negotiatons went further.

I'm sure you can obtain a list of previous owners from the DVLA, so do this it may help.
Take legal advice.

Oh, and all the best for getting it resolved quickly and satisfactorily.
 
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