How do you fight a ticket on another vehicle that is wrongly registered to your name?
April 1, 2010 by
Filed under fight identity theft
I moved to a different state on December 5th and changed my driver’s license and license plates on the 7th – I know I have 30 days but I figured I’d do it while I had the time and just be done with it.
Last week I received a speeding ticket in the mail from Illinois (my old state) dated for January 2nd. It was my old license plate, but with the description of a completely different vehicle and in a part of Illinois I don’t think I’ve ever visited. Maybe it was a typo by the police officer, maybe it was an error at the DMV. How do I even check that?
I don’t think it was identity theft – my credit reports (lousy though they are) don’t show any new loans on cars.
Long story short, I have in my hand a ticket for $350 that demands payment for an offense in another vehicle that happened while I was 1,300 miles away. How do you fight this?
….wow, that’s a mindcramp.
I used to work in auto collections and we had access to a database of all vehicle registrations, but I don’t think that’s public knowledge. Maybe you can ask the DMV to verify registration information?
I’d call the number on the ticket anyway and see what the desk officer thinks. I kinda doubt Illinois is going to have you extradicted for $350, but why chance it? We visited friends last summer and missed one of the new tollbooths and got a pretty terse letter from the tollway people. Hey, when i was growing up there, it was like five lanes of cash and one of the I-pass, now it’s like 10 I-pass and there might be one cash lane all the way at the right, but you had to get into it like a mile back because that’s where the line started. So I’d go by the numbers on this, buddy, don’t mess around with a state as crooked as Illinois.
Send them your old Illinois plate and your new plate. When they run the IL plate, they will see it comes back to a different vehicle.
They can run the new plate and see it was issued prior to the date of the offense. If your provide your drivers license information, that too will have a date of issue on it and will show you changed residence.
That should be enough to clear you.
You are probably on the right track with the typo theory.
Call the number on the demand letter and explain the situation to them. This type of situation is not common, but certainly not unheard of. The whole problem might be cleared up over the phone. Worst case … you may have to submit some proof that you were somewhere else at the time of the citation.