Driving-test touts offer instructors £250 monthly kickbacks

7 minutes agoNJ Convery, Bobbi Huyton and Abi SmittonBBC News Investigations

Watch the BBC confront Anil Ahmed, 34, who buys driving instructors’ login details and then sells tests online at a mark-up. He says the claims we put to him are a “complete fabrication”

Driving instructors are being offered kickbacks of up to £250 a month to sell their official test-booking login details to touts, a BBC investigation has found.

Touts use these login details to book driving tests in bulk and sell them to learners on WhatsApp and Facebook, charging as much as £500 for tests that should cost no more than £75. This makes it harder for learners to book through legitimate routes and adds to already lengthy waiting times.

We have also uncovered evidence that the outgoing head of the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA), Loveday Ryder, was told about these operations in February – yet some sellers reported to the DVSA are still operating. In response, the DVSA said it does not comment on specific complaints but has zero tolerance for those exploiting learner drivers.

We have identified touts operating in London, Birmingham, Manchester and the Home Counties. Posing as driving instructors, we approached them on WhatsApp and were offered monthly payments in exchange for login details to the DVSA’s system, where instructors can book tests.

One tout boasted he worked with more than 1,000 instructors – while another, Anil Ahmed, who goes by the name “Ahadeen”, said he signed up two instructors every week. We could not independently verify either of these claims. When we later confronted Mr Ahmed in person he denied any involvement, but we have found significant evidence implicating him.

We have not been able to identify specific driving instructors selling their details but our conversations with these touts, the sheer volume of tests they are selling, and images of test-booking systems shared on WhatsApp suggest hundreds of rogue instructors might be involved.

Separately, 30 instructors we spoke to across Great Britain – England, Scotland and Wales – said they had heard of test slots being sold at huge mark-ups. Ten of them told us they had been approached by touts or had spoken to other instructors who had been.

At the end of October, 642,000 learners in Great Britain were waiting to take a test, with an average wait time of 21 weeks, DVSA data shows. There is a separate system in Northern Ireland.

Waits can be as long as six months, according to learners we spoke to – some say they are turning to touts out of desperation. A recent DVSA survey suggested about one in three learners had used “third parties” to book their driving tests.

Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander recently announced plans to change driving test rules, which it is hoped will stop touts and reduce the backlog. From the spring, only learners – not instructors – will be able to book test slots.

Instructors we spoke to welcomed the Department of Transport’s (DfT) proposals, but also said they had been raising these issues for some time and now want to know whether the government will root out rogue teachers. Tests have been bulk-booked and resold for profit for years, but these instructors say it is now getting much worse.

The BBC has seen tests for sale – specifying dates, times and locations – in WhatsApp conversations

We were first alerted to the concerns about touts by an instructor in West Yorkshire, who emailed the BBC’s Your Voice inbox.

They told us they had been approached by someone offering £250 a month to buy their login details to the system that instructors use to book tests, called Online Business Service (OBS). Learner drivers can only book one test, but instructors can book multiple slots at different locations.

We decided to investigate and immediately found Facebook groups, Snapchat accounts and WhatsApp communities where hundreds of test slots were being posted for sale every day, costing up to £500 each.

The names of certain resellers popped up frequently and it was clear from the volume of tests being advertised that they had gained access to OBS.

The shady system we uncovered appears to work as follows.

Once touts are able to login, they then use learners’ licence details – harvested from customers buying tests from them – to book slots, which they then sell at inflated prices to other learners desperate to ditch their L plates.

Using people’s licenses to book tests may breach data protection laws. The behaviour of some instructors would also appear to be a violation of DVSA terms.

During our investigation frustrated instructors emailed us – alongside irate learners and their parents – many of them sick at the idea of learners feeling they had to pay touts to get a test.

Ian Pinto, who alerted us to a tout, says his children have spent two years trying to book driving tests

Ian Pinto from St Albans in Hertfordshire – whose children, aged 20 and 18, have spent the past two years trying to get driving tests – said: “These people are taking advantage of kids and I don’t want my kids’ friends being taken advantage of by these guys.”

One of the most popular resellers in Mr Pinto’s area is “Ahadeen”. We linked Ahadeen’s mobile phone number to a Facebook profile connected to Anil Ahmed – a 34-year-old who lives in Luton.

Posing as a driving instructor, we got in touch with the tout via WhatsApp and arranged a call.

“I sign up two driving instructors a week,” he boasted. Unlike other touts we contacted, he also claimed to have staff logged in as instructors all day, booking every test they could.

“I’m going to guarantee you £100 a month into your account every month… send me the login details,” he said.

Watch “Ahadeen” offering £100 a month in exchange for DVSA login details

The tout told us he could get driving tests at any centre in Great Britain and sell them to learners for between £222 and £242 per test.

Practical tests cost £62 from the DVSA – or £75 on evenings, weekends and bank holidays – so he would make at least £140 on every test he sold.

He explained how we, as a driving instructor, could buy a test slot from him for £192 and then sell it to a learner driver for up to £300, though he did add that this mark-up is perhaps “unethical”.

After our phone call, we made a fresh approach – via Facebook – to meet the tout in person. This helped us confirm Ahadeen’s identity as Anil Ahmed, as he gave us a phone number that was the same one we had WhatsApped Ahadeen on, and an address that public records show is linked to the name Anil Ahmed.

We have also seen bank details used to buy a test from “Ahadeen” – the name on that account is Anil Ahmed.

The man responded to the name Anil as we approached but later denied he was Mr Ahmed

When confronted in person, he refused to directly answer our questions and tried to deny being Mr Ahmed, even though he responded to the name Anil as we approached him.

Later in the conversation he told us that everything we were putting to him was a “complete fabrication”.

Anil Ahmed is not the only driving-test tout we spoke to.

Khalid sells tests in the West Midlands.

We posed as an instructor again, and Khalid offered us £250 a month for our logins. He said he used a “machine that automatically picks tests” on OBS accounts, and said he had “over 1,000 partner” instructors.

For every other instructor we helped signed up, he also told us, he would add £50 to our monthly payment. He claimed some instructors were making more than £500 a month from this.

A third tout – Jamal, who operates in the Home Counties – did not try to buy our login details but offered to sell us tests.

From WhatsApp conversations we have seen, it appears Jamal and Khalid are working together.

Driving instructor Peter Brooks, who teaches in Oxfordshire, wrote a letter in February to the head of the DVSA, Loveday Ryder, providing evidence that he and colleagues had gathered on Jamal. The BBC has seen this letter.

“They never seemed to realise that we were telling them that people were paying instructors for their logins. Nothing has ever happened and this Jamal character is still selling tests to this day. It makes me very angry.”

We put all of this to the DVSA. It told us that it does not comment on individual complaints, but added that any instructors who are involved in these schemes may be investigated.

In a subsequent FOI response, the DVSA told us that as of the 17 November it had closed 346 OBS accounts belonging to driving instructors for breaches of terms and conditions.

The DfT says the changes it is planning to introduce next spring will help clamp down on abuse of the system. In the meantime, however, learners who need a test may feel forced to pay the touts.

At Great Britain’s busiest driving test centre, Goodmayes in east London, 23-year-old student Md Rahmath Ullah Mehedi told us he had paid a tout £120 for a slot in March.

“Going through these people seems like the only way. If I could afford it, I’d pay again for a test even sooner but they’re asking for £400-£500 for tests in December.”

His instructor, Asif Darbar, who runs Busy Bee Driving School, said he couldn’t remember the last time one of his students booked a test through the official route.

Another instructor, Jag Singh, told us: “One of my students just failed and he was in tears because his parents are going to have to pay over £500 for another test. It’s a vicious cycle.”