Alicante Company Under Investigation for ‘Clocking’ Cars

Officers from the Guardia Civil Guard are investigating the managers and an employee of an Alicante company accused of alleged crimes of fraud and forgery, by manipulating the odometers of several vehicles to increase their market value.

The company was dismantled in July after 76 vehicles were found to have tampered odometers. In some cases, as much as 400,000 kilometers had been knocked off the real value.

The investigation began in February and was conducted by the research groups and Traffic Analysis subsectors of the Guardia Civil Trafico in Guadalajara (Castilla-La Mancha) and Alicante, under operation ‘Restacox’ covering 21 provinces.

Company managers allegedly acquired vehicles through another intermediary company established in Madrid. Following this, the investigators in Guadalajara detected an inordinate increase in applications from the company for the rehabilitation of industrial vehicles and therefore initiated the investigation.

These vehicles, once their odometers were manipulated, were transferred to an inspection station in Alicante, where they were issued duplicate cards, to obtain a new certificate, in which the modified kilometers were reflected .