HAVE you been fined for speeding in a city you have never been to? Have you been dazzled by cool sports cars passing by which you thought were definitely unobtainable in China? The answers may lie in false car plates.

These are not noticeable by the general public. But there's a Shanghai policeman named Chen Yemin who has developed an uncanny ability with a self-trained eagle eye to see through the cover of these "phantom" plates, detecting more than 600 of them on his downtown beat.

This expertise in identifying fake number plates has earned him the highest praise and recognition among his peers from all over the country. In fact, the 35-year-old traffic cop has just been named one of the "Outstanding Shanghai Police Officers of 2008" by the city government for his work.

The recognition is no surprise to those who know Chen - an officer with a neat hair cut, an intense gaze and bushy eyebrows - because he has always strived for professional excellence. Not to win prizes, but to achieve his ideal of being a policeman who defends the law and protects civilians.

It's easy to like Chen. He exudes enthusiasm about his job, is caring when talking about his baby son, favors truth over lies, and is proud of what he does.

But a traffic cop was not high on his career aspirations list when he joined the force.

"I was determined to become a policeman when I was very young," he said. He became a SWAT team member when he was 20 but then his unit was merged some years later and he found himself reassigned as a traffic cop which he has been ever since.

He admits the change of career frustrated him. The thrills of being in the SWAT team dwarfed the commonplace routine of working traffic.

"I was a sniper in Shanghai SWAT where I pointed guns at criminals' heads," he said.

"When that ended, the only thing I could do was to aim hand signals at drivers," said Chen. "When you have experienced the excitement of being a SWAT member, the sudden change to traffic is dull."

The sense of emptiness was eating him up inside and he needed to find something else for stimulation. And things started to change when he learned about fake car plates.

"That was when one of my relatives' plates was copied." Chen said. The family member found that he had been fined in Hangzhou (Zhejiang Province) for speeding and illegal parking. The problem was he had never been to Hangzhou and he was irate that he could do nothing but pay the fines.

"After that, he held for so long onto the belief that all traffic policemen, especially me, are moronic," Chen said.

The incident inspired him; he realized that he could also make a contribution by being a traffic cop and he didn't need SWAT team rifles to do it. On his own initiative, Chen started to study fake car plates, and found it a crime much harder to deal with than he thought.

He compared the different details of car plates from all over the country. He studied the variations in materials used, painting and typefaces, in fact everything about car plates.

"It was hard at the beginning," he said. "Nobody taught me anything about car plates, in fact nobody knew much at all about them at the time. I was a kind of pioneer in this field."

He had to virtually start from scratch with scraps of information. He took photos of all kinds of car plates while on patrol on the elevated road and would assiduously examine the photos after work.

It was not his designated job and there was no department approval but he spent most of his spare time on them.

His family did not approve of his work passion and his wife thought he was insane.

"I had no time to check the plates at work, so I bought a digital camera, a luxury in those days, to shoot only car plates on the elevated roads," he said.

"I took the photos home every day and tried to memorize every detail of them. I would totally agree with my wife's assessment of me if I were her," Chen laughed.

His home became a second office and his persistent study over the years annoyed her a lot.

"She accused me of not caring about the family and wasting time on useless business," said Chen. "Now, she's utterly convinced that my job was not useless."

Bottles of eye drops are everywhere in Chen's office. Though he has eagle eye sight, he is fanatical about protecting his eyes.

"When I was a sniper, I didn't have to recheck the training target once I'd shot it, I could see it clearly from 10 meters away."

These sharp eyes now enhance his work as a traffic cop.

"I am like an accountant who knows money very well, instantly alerted when touching different notes," he said.

"By going over real car plates every day, I developed a sense of what the authentic ones should look like. As a result, anything other than the real thing looks different to me." Chen said.

Cops always have worried families because of the dangerous nature of their work. Chen was once attacked by a mobster and the three broken ribs he sustained kept him in bed for a month and off work for half a year.

He speaks enthusiastically about how the mobster swung a steel bar at him, how he got hurt and stumbled to the ground, like he was talking about somebody else.

"It was nothing at all," he said. "In my work I have seized dozens of pistols and if any one of them had been fired at me, I wouldn't be here today."

Despite his strong personality, he plays smart when dealing with dangerous situations. "You never know who could be behind the car's windscreen. They might be quite dangerous or they might be law abiding civilians," he said.

Chen once followed a car and decided its plates were fake. In cases like this, he will weigh up the situation for the proper measures to adopt in dealing with it, whether to stop the car and politely practice law, or be agitated and careful when approaching.

"I develop a sense of the car as a whole," he said. Not only does he pay attention to the plate, he incorporates every detail of the car into his strategy. He assesses, for instance, the make of car, the tires, and even expressions on the driver's and passengers' faces. Anything out of the ordinary alerts him.

"Never once have I been wrong," he boasts.

Chen spotted the first fake diplomatic car plate in the country. "At the time, I was not sure what to do. On one hand, the car plate was obviously fake, on the other hand, I could not risk being that rude to stop a consular car," he said.

Chen memorized the make of the car and the plate number and did some research on it back home. Not long after that, he encountered the diplomatic car again. "I found a reason to approach the driver," he said, telling him he was doing an accident investigation.

"I knew it the minute I looked at the driver's license," he said. The license indicated the car was from an Oceania country, a long way from the European origin displayed on the car plate. It turned out that the driver just liked the vanity of driving in a fake diplomatic car.

Chen has a bunch of handy tools which have been adapted for his use. He uses a rubber hammer to examine the registration number on the engine. "By knocking on the inscribed numbers with the hammer, the fake ones tend to fall off," he said.

A bottle of paint thinner helps reveal the original color of a car after it has been repainted. Other common tools like sandpaper and pliers are also helpful. This gear is kept in a toolbox in the police vehicle when he is out on patrol.

"I can't tell you much about the secrets of the tools of trade. Some of them can be used against us if the criminals are alerted," he said.

Chen has shared his fake plate experience with fellow policemen. He explained most of his methods to recognize fake plates to a class aimed at promoting his techniques.

"Few of the students could really reach my level, because they are not as devoted," he said.

According to Chen, crime groups in Shanghai are expert in faking car plates, driving licenses, and even engine registration numbers.

Fake car plates are to cars what fake identification is to people, he said. With them, cars avoid taxes and fines, and the drivers are immune to punishment when these "phantom" vehicles hurt someone on the road.

They use the most up-to-date techniques to forge anything needed and this requires more high tech measures in Chen's work.

With his son recently born, he is ready to write a new chapter in his life. His family photos reveal a happy father sitting or standing with his son, his eyes full of pride.

"I hope he will become a policeman, too," Chen said of his newborn.

"I would love to make my son capable of defending himself and his family, but of course, it is his choice to make."

In the meantime, every car plate in Chen's office tells the ongoing story of his devotion.