Always dreamed of driving a 5 Series or a Bentley, but could never cough up the cash? You might have stood a chance with one particular group of car salesmen, but two caveats: they wre selling “cloned”, or counterfeit cars, for cheap, and they’ve just been busted by the authorities.
The Asia News Network reports that for the past six months, a syndicate operating out of several locations in Terengganu has been importing cloned luxury cars to sell to local customers for a fraction of the originals’ on-the-road price.
A series of raids throughout Terengganu conducted by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) and the Road Transport Department (JPJ) resulted in the seizure of 153 such vehicles.
JPJ director-general Ismail Idris said the cloned vehicles were brought in from neighbouring countries, including Singapore, and were slated to be sold locally, sometimes for as little as a third of the original market value.
“The vehicles, previously declared as total losses in the country they were smuggled from, were sold for between RM20,000 and RM50,000 in Malaysia. This caused our government a loss of RM 7 million in unpaid taxes,” he said.
The vehicles were also sporting forged road tax stickers.
“Owning these vehicles is against the law and dangerous because it is not covered by insurance,” Ismail said.
“Under the Road Transport Act, we will ask for owners of seized cars to relinquish their ownership and put the vehicles up for auction.”
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