How far are some motorists willing to go to avoid speeding fines? If most French people are content simply to spot the radars to adapt their driving, a small group of bandits has developed an unstoppable technique to drive at full speed without ever paying a fine.

For this, drivers use the “ghost garage” technique, reveals the Journal du Dimanche in its June 26 edition.

Their vehicles are indeed registered by a fake garage, created from scratch, and not referring to any natural person.

The operation requires a certain patience, and an assembly “worthy of tax evasion”, reports for its part the site Capital.

Because you must first create a garage company in the commercial register, obviously by entering a false identity. The address, in general, refers to vacant lots or HLM towers. The crooks, armed with the garage’s declaration receipt, then proceed to fraudulently register their vehicle.

When the vehicle is flashed, and the fines are issued, it’s a hitch: either the fine is sent to the person whose identity has been stolen, or to a person who, literally, does not exist.

Last March, a mechanic from the Pyrénées-Atlantiques was thus asked for 20 million euros by the State, after having received numerous fines for thousands of vehicles fraudulently sold in his name.

In 2019, the daily La Voix du Nord explained that these “ghost garages” were more and more numerous in the region of Tourcoing and Roubaix.

The practice, illegal and dangerous, is now in the sights of the police. But to identify and then dismantle each fake garage, you have to tackle a real painstaking job…