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Police Vehicle Fraud Unit gets fifth year of funding
A specialist police unit dedicated to tackling motor fraud has received funding from motor finance companies for a fifth year running.
Since its inception in 2007, the Vehicle Fraud Unit of the ACPO Vehicle Crime Intelligence Service (AVCIS) has recovered £19 million-worth of cars stolen by fraudsters. Because of its excellent success rate and high return on investment, motor finance companies have agreed to sponsor AVCIS’ Vehicle Crime Unit for a fifth consecutive year and fund a further two full-time police officers to help with nationwide investigations.
In the past year alone, AVCIS officers recovered over 300 cars, with a value of £5 million to FLA member motor finance companies and made 60 arrests.
Paul Harrison, Head of Motor Finance at the Finance & Leasing Association, welcomed the continued partnership with AVCIS:
“By catching fraudsters our partnership with the police is helping motor lenders to minimise the money they lose to fraud. This helps to keep finance costs as low as possible for car buyers in tough economic times.
“AVCIS has had an exceptional past 12 months and it is important that we provide the necessary support to help the police officers carry out their work. To this end, we have agreed to increase funding for two additional Detective Constables, including one in the ports. Ports operations have recovered 94 vehicles worth almost £2 million in the last year, and we want to make sure that fraudsters are not able to ship cars abroad in order to evade the police.”
Head of the Vehicle Fraud Unit at AVCIS, DCI Mark Hooper, said:
“I’d like to thank the FLA and finance companies for their continued support of our work to combat vehicle fraud, and for their increased contributions for the ports officers and other resources, which will allow us to recover more cars than ever before. We will be able to increase the number of cars we recover and also send a clear message to fraudsters.”
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Note to editors:
The FLA is the leading trade association for the motor finance sector in the UK. In 2010 FLA members financed £72.0 billion of new business. FLA members provided £19.0 billion of motor finance in 2010 and financed more than 50% of all new car registrations in the UK.
The ACPO Vehicle Crime Intelligence Service (AVCIS) is a national police unit dedicated to investigating and recovering fraudulently-obtained vehicles, and prosecuting offenders. The FLA has sponsored the Vehicle Fraud Unit of AVCIS since September 2007. Acting as the eyes and ears for the police, contributing finance companies are able to report suspected fraudulent cases to the unit for investigation and recovery.
AVCIS was set up in December 2006, following closure of the National Criminal Intelligence (NCIS) Service’s Organised Vehicle Crime Section when NCIS merged into the Serious Organised Crime Agency. The Vehicle Fraud Unit began operations in September 2007.
Following the success of this pilot scheme, the Metropolitan Police Service agreed to participate in a public/private partnership with the FLA and launched the Met Vehicle Fraud Unit in September 2001, again funded by FLA members, 20 of whom contribute to the AVCIS scheme. The Met VFU recovered cars worth over £10.5 million, and made around 300 arrests. Investigations have revealed links between vehicle finance fraud and other serious offences, such as the unlawful possession and trafficking of controlled drugs.
For further media information, please contact:
Jonny Holdcroft, FLA
T: 020 7420 9613 E: jonathan.holdcroft@fla.org.uk M: 07918 766980
Helen Saxon, FLA
T: 020 7420 9664 E: helen.saxon@fla.org.uk M: 07918 766993