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Insurers will be able to recoup millions paid out on motor theft claims through the sale of vehicles recovered in the course of a major anti-fraud operation. So claims a recent news item penned by Insurance Times reporter Norman West. Police cracking down on car cloning, the story avers, have recovered 640 stolen vehicles on which insurers have paid out £6.4m in claims. No arrests, however, have yet been made. A batch of blank registration forms apparently went missing from the DVLA in 2006. These were subsequently filled out to match cars of the same colour and type being driven legitimately. Unsuspecting purchasers of the re-plated vehicles only discovered the fraud much later when the DVLA checked its database. Insurance Times quotes Detective Sergeant Mark Tidy of ACPO’s Vehicle Crime Intelligence Service saying: “We are looking at a highly organised criminal organisation. Some people are making a lot of money. We do not know how many documents are out there. This could go on and on.” The paper also quotes an RBSI spokesman adding: “We advise used car purchasers to validate vehicle provenance before they purchase the car. The DVLA can verify ownership for a few pounds.” Quite so.