Ulez scammers prey on vulnerable Londoners as they claim to make non-compliant vehicles exempt
Ulez scammers prey on vulnerable Londoner's as they claim to make non-compliant vehicles exempt
PA
British drivers are being warned of Ulez scammers on social media, who are selling fake exemption certificates for non-compliant vehicles.
Scammers are using false adverts on social media to try and trick users to paying a fee which they say will make their vehicle exempt from pollutant charges when driving in London.
The fraudsters are charging customers up to £1,000 to make the ‘change’.
A seller told Sky News that they had successfully “processed” over a hundred vehicles on the scamming website, changing their status to compliant.
The Ulez expansion was met with widespread protests PASellers tell customers that all that is required is the vehicle’s logbook and payment.
Typically, older cars will not be Ulez compliant. Most petrol cars made prior to 2006 and most diesel cars made before 2015 must pay the £12.50 daily fee to drive in London.
The only way to avoid this charge is for drivers to update their engines, a process which can cost thousands of pounds.
The scammers would alter the vehicle’s status to compliant online, without making any actual changes to the inside of the car.
"We are working with the police to make sure the criminals face the consequences of their actions and are working closely with vehicle manufacturers to prevent fraudulent applications being successful," a TFL spokesperson said.
Other drivers have fallen victim to copycat websites, which bear a strong similarity to the TFL site, where they collect money from naive targets.
Victims of the fake adverts have incurred high fines from TFL, as they believed that they had paid the correct fee whereas TFL had no record of this, causing them to send out fines.
The local Government body has said that their official website is the only place to pay online.
The charge is £12.50 a day, which applies to vehicles that do not meet up-to-date emissions standards.
The penalty for not paying is £180, which goes down to £90 if paid within two weeks.
ULEZ LATEST:
Sadiq Khan has infuriated protesters of his Ulez expansion planPAIt was recently expanded to cover the whole of London, having previously covered just inner London.
A victim of the scammers, Bobby Sharp, paid £540 in TFL fines after unknowingly using a copycat website.
Sharp said: "Let's just say I felt quite ill and quite faint afterwards because I thought I'd done the right thing by paying and then found out I hadn't paid at all.
"TfL have not made it easy. Their official site is not user-friendly, whereas the scammers' was so easy, and I thought 'Well, I don't know why I was so worried about this'.
"The whole process was frustrating once I had to do it properly," she told the BBC.
Seb Dance, deputy mayor for transport said: "Unfortunately, there are copycat websites for institutions wherever you go. It's a huge problem and, obviously, we work with internet companies to remove them when we find them."
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