Thieves have 130,000 blank log books

Thieves are using 130,000 blank registration documents to give fake new identities to stolen vehicles before selling them on, it was revealed today.

Stolen vehicles are “cloned” in the scam, which means they are given the registration, engine and frame number of a legitimate vehicle of the same model and colour.

The same details are then put on one of the blank registration documents, stolen from the DVLA.

History checks only examine the past of the copied vehicle, whose owner will be unaware of the scam.

The Association of Chief Police Officer’s Detective Chief Inspector Mark Hooper told the Daily Mirror: “We’re recovering about 10 a week and we think there’s easily over 120,000 to 130,000 stolen blank documents out there still.

“It will keep me very busy and my team very busy for the next hundred years or so, I suspect.”