Too Weird...Any Ideas on This?

[Jade Tigress]

I just got a call from my husband. He just got something in the mail from the State of Illinois. It's a fine of over $200 for blowing off tolls. It has the camera picture of a Ford pickup with MY license plate on it! WTF??? My license plate is on MY CAR!!!

 

[Carol]

Very weird. I'd call the EZpass office right now (they should be open in the evenings), report it as a potential fraud, and ask for an appeal.

Your time to appeal is very limited, it's important that you get your complaint in quickly.

 

[exile]

I just got a call from my husband. He just got something in the mail from the State of Illinois. It's a fine of over $200 for blowing off tolls. It has the camera picture of a Ford pickup with MY license plate on it! WTF??? My license plate is on MY CAR!!!

Gotta be a duplicate—two different sets of plates with the same number. Could the Ford be an out-of-stater but not obviously so? The differences between some states' plates is pretty hard to tell... and the other state might have assigned the same plate code?

 

[14 Kempo]

I just got a call from my husband. He just got something in the mail from the State of Illinois. It's a fine of over $200 for blowing off tolls. It has the camera picture of a Ford pickup with MY license plate on it! WTF??? My license plate is on MY CAR!!!

Yes, my guess is fraud as well. Could be a duplicate license plate. Could be something such as someone making a 3 look like an 8 or vice-versa, or a 1 into a T, anything like that. I'm with Carol, report is immediately. You can prove the license plate is on your car and that you don't not own the truck.

 

[Shuto]

It's apparently a big problem in London.

link

Besides stealing plates outright, some thieves troll supermarket parking lots and streets and copy plate numbers. These "car cloners," as authorities call them, send the numbers to Internet companies that produce exact replicas of plates without proof of ownership, says John Wake, head of the UK Vehicle Crime Intelligence Unit, which analyzes national vehicle crime trends.

 

[exile]

It's apparently a big problem in London.

link

Besides stealing plates outright, some thieves troll supermarket parking lots and streets and copy plate numbers. These "car cloners," as authorities call them, send the numbers to Internet companies that produce exact replicas of plates without proof of ownership, says John Wake, head of the UK Vehicle Crime Intelligence Unit, which analyzes national vehicle crime trends.[/COLOR]

Bloody hell—there doesn't seem to be any limit to the scams people can think up....

 

[MJS]

I just got a call from my husband. He just got something in the mail from the State of Illinois. It's a fine of over $200 for blowing off tolls. It has the camera picture of a Ford pickup with MY license plate on it! WTF??? My license plate is on MY CAR!!!

How many plates were issued to your car? If you have 2, I'd check to see if they're both there. That is odd though. I'd definately call someone to get more info.

 

[jks9199]

Very weird. I'd call the EZpass office right now (they should be open in the evenings), report it as a potential fraud, and ask for an appeal.

Your time to appeal is very limited, it's important that you get your complaint in quickly.

Gotta be a duplicate—two different sets of plates with the same number. Could the Ford be an out-of-stater but not obviously so? The differences between some states' plates is pretty hard to tell... and the other state might have assigned the same plate code?

How many plates were issued to your car? If you have 2, I'd check to see if they're both there. That is odd though. I'd definately call someone to get more info.

Good points all around, though I haven't heard of too many folks counterfeiting tags as an organized operation in the US. Doesn't mean it's not happening... just that I haven't heard of it.

Do make sure you didn't lose one tag; it does happen that some tags are stolen that way.

But what I guess happened is one of two errors; first, that the camera (or the operator) misread it the tag, making a B and 8 or a 5 and S, for example, or second, that they got the state wrong. There are more examples of states that are hard to identify 'cause they're too similar for me to list.

Contact the issuing agency; the info should be on the ticket. They'll tell you the appeal rights and process. For example, in VA (unless the re-implementation altered things), you can simply file an affadavit that you weren't driving -- or in this case, that it wasn't your car.

Gotta love automated toll collection, huh? You'd think a human being would have had to review the ticket, and would have noticed that the descriptions don't match.

 

[Shuto]

How many plates were issued to your car? If you have 2, I'd check to see if they're both there. That is odd though. I'd definately call someone to get more info.

That's a good point. Last year criminals were stealing one plate from cars where I work.

 

[Jade Tigress]

Well, I have a personalized plate, "RAWR". One is on the rear and one for the front is in my trunk. My first thought was a counterfeit plate too. But still...

 

[exile]

Well, I have a personalized plate, "RAWR". One is on the rear and one for the front is in my trunk. My first thought was a counterfeit plate too. But still...

What I find extra bizarre about all this is that, if you were going to use a `hot' plate or a counterfeit, you wouldn't want something that's as memorable as RAWR... I mean, LD8 446 or whatever isn't exactly going to stick in someone's memory to quite same extent, eh? And if the plate's not legit, that kind of attention and easy recall is the last thing the offender would want... Accidental out-of-state duplicate seems more likely, no?

 

[jks9199]

What I find extra bizarre about all this is that, if you were going to use a `hot' plate or a counterfeit, you wouldn't want something that's as memorable as RAWR... I mean, LD8 446 or whatever isn't exactly going to stick in someone's memory to quite same extent, eh? And if the plate's not legit, that kind of attention and easy recall is the last thing the offender would want... Accidental out-of-state duplicate seems more likely, no?

Accidental IN state duplication isn't impossible, either. I recall reading sometime in the last year or two about a large number of tags being recalled because they were duplicated... It'd be less likely with a personalized tag, but not impossible. But I'd bet on the wrong state right now...

 

[Blotan Hunka]

Automatic plate reading camera error would be my guess. They only read digits and dont differentiate between states. If someone from another state who had the same custom plate as you blew the toll, this could have happened. Call the thruway authority or the agency that sent you the notice and contest it.

 

[exile]

Accidental IN state duplication isn't impossible, either. I recall reading sometime in the last year or two about a large number of tags being recalled because they were duplicated... It'd be less likely with a personalized tag, but not impossible. But I'd bet on the wrong state right now...

It'll be very interesting to see how this plays out, eh? You'd think all the plate numbers would be entered in some computerized data base which would automatically send an error message in case of duplication... but even so, I guess that still leaves room for human error (failure to enter the duplicated plate code)... it does seem a long stretch, but I suppose, when you're dealing with such large numbers, it can happen.

 

[jks9199]

It'll be very interesting to see how this plays out, eh? You'd think all the plate numbers would be entered in some computerized data base which would automatically send an error message in case of duplication... but even so, I guess that still leaves room for human error (failure to enter the duplicated plate code)... it does seem a long stretch, but I suppose, when you're dealing with such large numbers, it can happen.

Or failure to properly set up the next run on the tag stamping machine... I don't remember exactly how it happened, or how many there were. I'm going solely off of memory, but I think it came to light as a result of someone being chased for a ticket that "they" got half the state away, on a day when they were demonstrably somewhere else.

 

[Jade Tigress]

Well, my husband called on it today, a supervisor will be calling him back in the next day or two.