A Kent woman realised her car registration plate had been cloned after her insurance company accused her of being in an accident over 280 miles (340km) away in Liverpool.

Shelli Birkett, from Herne Bay, said she had “never been to Liverpool in my life” and that she “had to fight” to prove she hadn’t been in the city at the time.

She is one of many victims of number plate fraud, which can involve plates being copied or stolen.

Kent Police said reports of this type of crime had been going up in recent years.

Ms Birkett’s case was eventually closed after she proved that she was in her home town on the day it happened.

She said she had been “minding her own business at home” at the time of the incident in Liverpool, and that the situation had been “scary”.

“I said it wasn’t me but they asked me to prove my whereabouts and to send photos of the condition of my car, and they continued to investigate,” she said.

“Then I remembered I could use my Google locations and luckily on that day I was in Herne Bay and I posted some videos on my business page on social media, proving I was at work that day.”

Ms Birkett said that not only had her number plate been cloned, “they’d put it on the same make car”.

She told BBC South East she also received letters from the insurance company’s lawyers asking for settlement money when the case had closed.

The motoring organisation RAC said criminals steal or copy the identity of a legally registered vehicle and use it to hide the identity of a stolen or salvaged vehicle, which is often similar in model and appearance.

Criminals will either steal the registration plates from the vehicle or have duplicate number plates made to be put on another car.

Often they locate number plates to clone online, for example via images on car buying and selling websites.

New figures obtained by the BBC show reports of number plate thefts in Kent have risen 37% over four years.

There were 1,120 cases reported in 2024 compared with 815 in 2020, according to a Freedom of Information request.

Last year the BBC revealed a 64% increase over three years in the number of fines cancelled due to car cloning incidents in London.

Ch Supt Rob Marsh from Kent Police said: “In relation to number plate thefts, people are clearly using them to commit other crimes such as whether it’s to avoid congestion charging, other road toll fees, whether it’s to do with making off without paying for fuel.

“With the increases in the cost of living that can sometimes be a reason for people to engage in criminality of this type.

“If someone wakes up in the morning, and their number plate is missing, they know they’ve been a victim of crime.

“If the number plate has, unbeknown to the victim been cloned, we’ve got to wait for it to trigger an ANPR camera linked to another incident and then it would come to our attention and we would then start our investigation.”

The Home Office said: “The cloning and defacing of number plates affects road safety and provides cover for criminals. We are working with the police, the DVLA and other partners to crack down on these crimes.

“We began work on a new Road Safety Strategy, the first in over a decade, which aims to reduce road deaths and prevent related crime. More details will be shared in due course.”