Criminals have cloned the National Car Testing Service website and are asking unwitting motorists for anything between €60 and €600 to secure appointments for fake checks.
Consumers are being led to the website via popular search engines and while the fraudulent site mirrors the NCT home page, no bookings are made when payments are taken.
The NCT was alerted to the copycat website, which has featured on search engines only sporadically, over the weekend but has been unable to have it shut down.
The NCT has been contacted by a number of people who were conned into handing over substantial amounts of money in the mistaken belief they had successfully booked their cars in for a test.
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One motorist paid an initial €60 but became suspicious after being contacted a second time just hours later with a request for an additional €600.
He declined to pay the larger amount and instead contacted the NCT, which confirmed it was a scam.
A second motorist was not so lucky and did end up paying more than €600 to the fraudsters, ending up with nothing to show for it.
“This website falsely claims to be the official NCT platform and is charging customers significant sums for what it represents as an NCT booking,” a spokeswoman told The Irish Times.
“However, no legitimate booking is created, and the service being offered is entirely fraudulent.”
The spokeswoman emphasised that the “only official and legitimate website for booking an NCT is www.ncts.ie”.
It is not the first time the NCT has been targeted by rogue operators. It issued an alert last year about a website that had set itself up as an intermediary which was making bookings for motorists for a fee.
While motorists who booked a test via the intermediary were charged an additional fee that they would not have had to pay if making their bookings directly on the official website, the bookings turned out to be genuine.
In this new case, motorists run the risk of handing over the money and being left with no bookings and a potentially compromised credit or debit card.
