The Lavender Hill mob . . . of car scams

D.B. writes: I received an email from Ryan Hirons, a motoring journalist with the website Carwow, offering a valuation of my car. I clicked the link on the email and entered the details requested. A day later, I received a valuation and an invoice for £99, and was told that if I do not pay then the debt will be passed to a collection agency.

DO NOT pay a penny. This is a scam based on lies and false claims. If any debt collection firm touches it, tell me.

The first lie is that the email you received did not come from Ryan Hirons at Carwow. It may look authentic. It says: ‘Many used cars are becoming an appreciating asset – find out if the car on your drive is worth more than you paid for it.’ And there is a link which says simply ‘Value my car’.

Clicking on the link took you to a website called car-rate.co.uk. But Carwow denies any involvement in this. It told me: ‘We can confirm that the email did not come from Carwow’s employee Ryan Hirons, and that neither Carwow nor Ryan Hirons has a connection to car-rate.co.uk or to its owners.’

So, following in your footsteps, I clicked through to the car-rate website myself. ‘What’s your car worth right now?’ it asks.

All you need do is enter your car’s registration number. What it doesn’t say is that there is a £99 fee. To discover this, you need to know that you are not just looking at a fixed web page, but one that scrolls down to reveal the hidden small print.

I wanted to discuss this with car-rate, but it provides no phone number. I emailed the address on the website, but it bounced back with an automatic message saying ‘the recipient’s domain does not exist’. Not to worry though, as the car-rate website gives its address – 83 Lavender Hill in South West London.

This turned out to be home to a genuine company called Idea Space, which provides desks and work facilities for small businesses. But as soon as I mentioned car-rate, the helpful chap at Idea Space told me: ‘They are not here. We have had people calling for them but they are just misusing our address.’

This left me with one place still to investigate. Car-rate’s invoice to you shows a different address, 56 Shoreditch High Street, which is an office block in East London.

This is the address of Wise, an FCAregulated payment transfer company which offers ways to move money between different currencies and countries – and the signs are that this scam is operated from the Republic of Ireland.

Again, there was no trace of carrate in Shoreditch, but it does have an account at Wise.

If you had paid the £99, your money would have gone to sort code 23-1470, account number 71245295.

I gave all the details of the scam to Wise, which told me: ‘Whenever we detect activity violating our Acceptable Use Policy, we take the appropriate steps to stop this from happening.’ Wise is now investigating. I hope this means the account will be shut down and any payments arriving for it will be returned to the victim.