I went inside UK’s ‘ghost plate’ epidemic helping dodgy drivers & crime gangs… how I bought fake reg for just £40

BRITAIN is in the grip of a dodgy number plate crisis as drug runners, people smugglers, fine dodgers and even taxi drivers use cloned tags. Rogue firms are selling copycat and “ghost” registration numbers that allow organised crime gangs to dodge cops and ordinary Brits to avoid parking charges – and we were able to buy several with ease. One masked seller is flogging a device that allows drivers to flip and hide their number plates Credit: tiktok Police officers Matthew Blades and Tom Clough were killed when a car with cloned plates smashed into them going the wrong way up the A66 in Middlesbrough Credit: PA A Sun investigation today reveals as many as ONE MILLION copycat plates are on the country’s roads. We were easily able to buy plates from an online seller who failed to ask for identification or logbooks required by law. And we can also expose a dangerous loophole that makes it even easier for criminals to use imposter plates – by ordering “show” versions meant for use at car events or on private land. There are no regulations around “show plates”, which means anyone can fit false or cloned reg numbers on their cars. One expert said: “It’s extraordinary how simple it is to evade cameras.” Our probe comes after illegal plates were involved in the deaths of two police officers on the A66 in Middlesbrough last month. Devoted dad PC Matthew Blades, 37, and PC Tom Clough, 38, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan before joining the police, were killed when a VW Passat smashed into them while being driven by joyriders. The occupants Michael Robert Cahill, 23, Theo Rae, 17, Cole Robert Worthy, also 17, Jacob Matusiak, 23, and Makai Saddington, 18, were also declared dead at the scene. The deaths have thrown the spotlight on cloned plates – replicas that use the real reg numbers of cars driven by other unwitting motorists – and ghost tags, coated with reflected sprays, films, and modified letters to make it difficult for cameras to pick them up. We even found one scammer on TikTok and Instagram flogging a remote-controlled mechanism that would allow drivers to spin their number plate from one reg to another. Hidify advertises wearing a sinister looking mask – yet runs a website of the same name that looks perfectly legitimate and also sells blackout plates. The seller, linked to an address in London, claims the £97 tags are for “private” use only. He did not respond to request for comment. Social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram carry ads for plates with hashtags such as #ghost #invisible and #stealthuk We were able to easily buy number plates from a seller who advertised on social media but also has a legal website. Social media platforms advertise ghost plates – but there is confusion over whether the ghost term refers to the design or the fact it can evade cameras Credit: tiktok Plates R Us said the firm had made a mistake in sending us number plates without receiving proper documentation Credit: Supplied Features investigations editor Grace Macaskill with number plates sent without documentation Credit: Glen Minikin Plates R Us in Blackburn sold us reg numbers for £40 despite not being given paperwork proving identification or car ownership which is against the law. The company’s site stated that documents would be needed and there was an option to upload them. We were sent the plates without complying. The firm said it had made a genuine mistake. We also easily ordered show plates from two other companies costing £55 and £45. It is not against the law to buy them but it is simple for drivers to fit them to their car. Our findings are just the tip of the iceberg. One study found dozens of firms registered with the DVLA willing to sell plates illegally. Firms pay as little as £45 to register as an official supplier with the DVLA and there are currently 45,000 outlets selling plates. Cloned number plates have seen the real owners slapped with fines – and one woman ended up with penalties totalling £2,800 after her VW Golf registration was copied. When Sandra Yarwood came home after a two-week holiday in June this year she was hit with 32 separate £95 fines for driving in bus lanes, parking illegally and violating no-traffic zones across London. Yet she was in Canada at the time. Sandra, a media consultant who lives in West London, said: “Dealing with the bureaucracy around it was a nightmare. “Companies make it really hard to appeal fines and most of the time you can’t speak to anyone at all. “I started to have nightmares that the bailiffs were going to turn up.” Katrina was targeted by criminals who cloned her number plate and racked up fines Credit: Darren Fletcher Sandra Yarwood came back from holiday to find more than 30 traffic and parking offences had been registered to her car after her number plate was cloned Credit: Ian McIlgorm Katrina Collier, 55, of South East London, was ordered to pay two parking charges for her Honda Civic when it was sitting outside her front door in July. She tried to appeal but heard nothing back until a debt collection firm got involved and demanded £170 for each fine. Katrina, author of a book called The Damage Of Words, said: “I reported it to the police who gave me a crime reference and that was the only way I was able to resolve things. “My car was advertised online before I bought it last year, so it’s possible that whoever did this got my reg from the ad.” A study by the Vehicle Identification Group, made up of academics advising the Government on the issue, found 135 registration plate suppliers, signed up with the DVLA, were willing to sell illegal cloned versions after attempting to buy them. Researcher Dr Michael Rhead, who used to work in the field for the police, told The Sun: “Every crime you can think of has been associated with false or dodgy number plates; murder, date rape, robbery, burglary, theft of cars. “You have to be concerned about terrorism too. If you put out a general alert for a number plate and a terrorist has a false plate on, the vehicle may not be stopped. “It becomes even more difficult with a ghost plate.” Not every reg advertised as a “ghost” plate is illegal because, confusingly, it’s also used to describe a type of reg design with low-contrast. He said criminals can easily go on to eBay and buy the raw materials and machines to create tags. “It’s a licence to print money for these people,” he added. “Anyone can set up in the business, including criminal organisations.” It is difficult to say exactly how many fake plates are on the road but analysis shows that it could be almost three-quarters of a million. Chris Shepherd shows how dodgy number plates can show up on road cameras Credit: Ian Whittaker Former British Transport Police officer Chris Shepherd works for ANPR camera manufacturer MAV Systems, which found cloned plates are on the rise – up from to two and a half percent being displayed on Britain’s cars to as many as three percent. With 36.7 million passenger cars on the road that equates to 1.1million. Chris said: “These plates look to be perfectly fine to the human eye, but can read as incomplete or totally invisible to cameras.” MAV Systems, which is developing more advanced cameras, also carried out tests around a major British airport and found as many as 40 per cent of private taxis carried illegal plates to avoid £6 drop-off fees. Chris said: “When you start to really look at this, that could be a taxi that my mum is getting into and it’s untraceable. “We did a dip test in an area of the south east with cameras and in 48 hours we caught about 1,400 vehicles with ghost plates. “Of a sample of 1139 ghost plates at one site, 323 were found to have issues relating to tax, MOT, no keeper or insurance. “There isn’t an approved average speed camera system that detects ghost plates so a lot of boy racers install them. “Another group of drivers are just trying to avoid bridge or congestion charges. “Then you’ve got the organised crime groups. “It’s farcical that anyone can set themselves up to sell plates and join the DVLA registration scheme for about £45. In 2024, a West Midlands man was jailed for three years, four months for making thousands of number plates from his bedroom in Tipton. Daniel Day, 26, produced plates used in more than 140 crimes, including an armed robbery at a Dudley post office, shooting in Wolverhampton and car key burglaries. He is said to have made around £200,000 and could supply his wares in as little as 18 minutes. Robert Gurney, also a member of the Vehicle Identification Group and an international expert on number plate recognition, said there is no real deterrent to stop motorists using the right tag. He said: “If you use show plates you can get a £100 fine. If you want to go in and out of Manchester or London congestion and ULEZ charges will cost you more than that each year. “This is why ordinary people are now attracted to doing this. It’s big money for your average person. “We recommend power of seizure for illegal number plates, in the same way that taxi drivers can have their badge taken off them. “Secondly, the fine has got to be something like six points and a large amount. Maybe £1,000 would make people think.” Fraser Sampson, former biometrics and surveillance commissioner for the UK, said current cameras had a ‘misread’ rate of around five per cent. He said: “It’s extraordinary how simple it is to avoid cameras and how widespread the impact is – and nobody is measuring it fully. “The country’s ANPR camera system has more hits per second than Instagram with 80million reads a day yet it’s not sophisticated enough to tell us if misreads are ghost plates. “The incredible thing is you don’t even need to be a cyber genius to avoid the cameras. You can simply hide the ones you are displaying or go a bit further and display plates from vehicles belonging to other people.” Manager of Plates R Us, Maj Hussain, said sending out plates without asking for paperwork was a “genuine mistake”. He said: “My nephew was working that day and is still being trained up and we are very sorry for sending them out because it shouldn’t have happened. “ As a company, we recognise there is a problem with cloned plates and this is something that would never normally happen. “We usually ask for documents over email, to be sent within 24 hours, before we even make plates.” He said the company would review and tighten its procedures. TikTok removed the Hidify account after we contacted them. According to the platform, it’s guidelines ban the trade of illegal goods. Meta said it was investigating the Hidify account. It said 159million scam ads were removed from its site last year. The Department of Transport pointed to a new nationwide crackdown on dubious plates. A new National Roads Policing Coordination Centre will bring together forces from around England to share intelligence and data. The initiative will involve trialing new technology, including specialised £150 night googles. Roads Minister Justin Madders said: “We’re cracking down on illegal number plates with new policing resource and innovative tech. “Illegal number plates are used for crimes from evading parking charges to drug trafficking and we’re stepping in to protect drivers. “This is a signal to anyone using illegal number plates that their time is up. We will catch you and our roads and streets will be safer for it.”