A father of five is facing the prospect of having to change his name and move home to escape thousands of pounds of fines sent to him after his identity was stolen.

Mohammed Amir Ali, 34, a chef, has been wrongly issued with motoring fines totalling £10,000, has had his car clamped and been forced to pay hundreds of pounds to bailiffs. Mr Ali, of Westwood, near Oldham, Greater Manchester, has also had an injury claim made against him after a car accident that he was not involved in.

He has paid hundreds of pounds in legal fees in an effort to stop the claims and is now planning to change his name and move house. “I have had letters almost on a weekly basis accusing me of things I have not done,” Mr Ali said. “I tell them and have written countless letters but no one seems to listen. The total figure in fines and court costs rattled up from these parking tickets is being estimated at £10,000, but I will not being paying a penny of it.”

Mr Ali realised that his identity had been stolen after he received a letter last year about a car accident in London that he was supposedly involved in. “I thought to myself, ‘This must be a mix-up. I have not been to London’. So I rang them to set the record straight. They seemed fine about it and just told me to write them a letter, which I did.

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“Then within weeks I got a letter about a different car from a hire company and a letter about parking tickets. They were from companies asking for their car back. Then they sent me a letter saying I had not paid my bill because I had had the car for too long.

“I contacted the company and they said, ‘Write us a letter’. So I did, and I decided to go to police. I asked for a crime reference number and they would not give me one because they said it was a civil matter. They told me to write a letter to the hire company and the company with the parking tickets. I wrote about nine or ten letters.”

Mr Ali has since had visits from bailiffs demanding payment over the parking fines. He said: “They came in and I said, ‘Why are you here?’. They said there was a parking ticket and I owed £800 with all the court costs.

“The police said, ‘They have a court order. You have to pay’. And I said, ‘I am not paying, this is identity theft’. The police said, ‘If you do not give them money, we will help them’.

“So I had to pay £444. Then another baliff came in front of my house and clamped my car. They said I owed £300 for a parking ticket and if I did not pay in ten minutes it would double to £600. So in the end I paid £364. My car was clamped and I need it for work.

“I work hard to support my family and we are being put through a living hell. I cannot sleep at night and do not want to open the door. I wake up every morning wondering if the baliffs will come today. If this problem is not solved soon I am thinking of moving house and changing my name. We are all so worried.

“I need help from somewhere. I do not know who to turn to to stop these baliffs. The police said that in the law’s eyes, I am not the victim. The companies are the victim. But I risk losing everything. These parking tickets could add up to around £10,000 and I don’t know what to do or why this is happening. It is too much stress for one man to take, and it seems there is no one who can help me.”

There were 80,000 cases of ID theft in 2006, according to CIFAS, the fraud prevention service, making it Britain’s fastest-growing crime. These figures indicate an 800 per cent increase on detected cases ten years ago but the true scale is not known.

According to figures published by the Home Office in February last year, the official estimate of identity fraud is £1.7 billion, but this is not exact and experts say that it could be a lot more.

Chris Mackenzie, of Greater Manchester Police, said: “Identity fraud is a serious and growing problem, which affects all our communities. The best way to safeguard our personal information is through strong preventative measures, whether you are shopping online, or throwing out your bills.”

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