Sandra Yarwood, a media consultant from London, returned from a two-week holiday to find her mailbox overflowing with traffic violation notices. She had received 32 separate fines, each costing £90, from seven different local authorities. The notices claimed she had driven in bus lanes, parked illegally, and entered no-traffic zones across the capital.
Ms Yarwood realized she was the victim of a registration-plate cloning scam, a practice where fraudulent copies of a vehicle's number plate are attached to different cars. These cloned plates are then used to avoid traffic fines or commit other offenses. In Ms Yarwood's case, the cloned registration number was affixed to a similar black Volkswagen Golf in south London.
Contesting the £2,800 in Penalty Charge Notices (PCNs) proved to be a significant challenge. Ms Yarwood described spending countless hours battling the technology and bureaucracy involved in appealing the fines, noting that it was often difficult to speak with anyone directly and that the default assumption was that the driver was at fault.
Although her plates were cloned in mid-June, eight weeks later, Ms Yarwood still had two outstanding fines. Due to missed deadlines, she was initially ordered by Lewisham Council to appear before legal tribunals scheduled for February 2027. She had believed that reporting the cloning to the DVLA and police, along with an incident reference number, would suffice, but she was instead deluged with requests for proof of her car's whereabouts and photographs from every angle.
Ms Yarwood eventually identified discrepancies between her car and the one in the PCN footage, including an English Heritage sticker on her windscreen and a scratch down the side, which were absent on the fraudster's vehicle. She also noted a sunroof on her car that was not present on the cloned vehicle.
She spent hours uploading this evidence to various websites, as each PCN required a separate appeal. While Greenwich, Transport for London, Southwark, Central Parking Management, and Merton eventually conceded her case, the online portals for Lewisham and Lambeth proved problematic. After repeated attempts, Ms Yarwood was able to submit her evidence to Lewisham, but Lambeth's system remained down. She resorted to sending pictures of her car via registered post to Lambeth after an unhelpful chatbot experience and being told the system was down. A human representative at Lambeth eventually assisted her.
A spokesperson for Lambeth stated that both outstanding PCNs have now been canceled and apologized for the difficulties Ms Yarwood experienced. The spokesperson added that the council requires a high level of evidence in alleged cloning cases, including clear photos of all four sides of the vehicle, and acknowledged a technical issue that briefly prevented motorists from submitting challenges online.
Lewisham confirmed its PCNs had been canceled and apologized for Ms Yarwood's frustrating experience, stating they are working to improve the process for identifying and reviewing cloned registration cases. Ms Yarwood, who is in her sixties, highlighted that if she had been less tech-savvy, the process would have been even more difficult.