ACCORDING to estimates released by the South African Insurance Crime Bureau, vehicles worth R8.5bn are stolen in SA each year. Almost 30% of these (worth about R4.9bn) make it across our borders, about R3.1bn worth remain behind (and are cloned), while vehicles worth R514m end up in local chop shops.Surprisingly, only 39,000 vehicles reappeared in the insurance sector’s system last year, a drop in the bucket considering the theft statistics.Where are the rest of the cloned vehicles — 61,000 out of an estimated 100,000 on our roads?According to the South African Police Service and insurance forensic investigators, a vehicle for which thieves have copied the vehicle identification number from a legally owned car and applied it to a stolen vehicle of the same make and model, is difficult to detect.This is because everything appears to be normal until the vehicle is used in a crime or involved in an accident and further investigation of its identification documents is required.A 2008 To...
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