When I read a friend’s recent post about a stolen license plate, I laughed out loud! Not at his misfortune, but at mine. Which makes the friend’s look like a picnic on a warm pre-COVID summer day.
On June 6, 2010, I sold a blue 1999 Chevy Camaro to a guy named Hector for $600. It had thrown a rod and needed repairs. It was actually my son’s car, but registered in my name.
A few months after the sale, I began getting notices of bridge toll violations from the FasTrak system for the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge in the San Francisco Bay Area. The notices showed the front of my old Camaro and the license plate.
Hector, you ass—-, you haven’t registered the car and it’s still in my name! (A letter I had sent to Hector at the address he gave — containing the second key I had found for the car — came back as undeliverable, so I had no way to contact him.)
Unfortunately, I had neglected to save a copy of the “release of liability” form I had filed with the DMV and had to write to get a copy. As I waited, I got more bridge toll violations from the same bridge.
Then I got a notice from the CHP that the car had been impounded to Fast Tow in Concord because the driver was unlicensed. Then came a bill for $3,075 from Fast Tow for towing and storage charges. Then a demand letter from CBA, a collection agency, for that amount.
After several weeks, a copy of the DMV form finally arrived, and I sent copies to Bay Area FasTrak, the tow company and collection agency, the last two with a letter warning that if they continued to pursue this matter and my credit was affected I would sue them.
My problems from the Bay Area were over! Or so I thought.
This past November, I traded in a leased all-electric 2018 Chevy Bolt for a leased 2020 Bolt. (Bolts — which have astounding acceleration, excellent handling and a range of about 250 miles a charge — are the favorite cars I have ever owned. I will never buy a “gas” car again! But I digress.)
Less than two weeks after the trade-in, I began getting toll violation notices from bridges in the Bay Area. They were for a Chevy, and showed a photo of just the license plate. The Chevy dealer in Escondido had already sold my old Bolt and someone was driving it unregistered in the Bay Area!
Oh was I pissed! It’s like déjà vu all over again! I called the dealer, ready to read them the riot act, but it was the weekend and the guy in charge of DMV issues wasn’t in.
I realized I hadn’t filed a release form on the 2018 Bolt — I didn’t know you needed to for a leased car — and immediately went to the DMV website to do that. But when I put in the plate number from the toll violations and the VIN from the car, I was booted out with an “invalid entry” notice and could not continue. I tried that at least five times, with the same result.
(I need to add here that five days earlier, when I was putting the paperwork for my new Bolt in the filing cabinet, it wouldn’t fit. The drawer was stuffed full. So I removed a bunch of old files and found the folder for the Camaro issue from a decade ago, which I had totally forgot about. In the throw-out pile it went. I was putting folders and files in the fireplace for disposal when for some reason I still don’t understand, I pulled the Camaro file from the pile and returned it to the file cabinet.)
At my desktop, while I was still trying to file the DMV release form for the old Bolt, I noticed something strange. I could not remember its plate number, but was pretty sure it started with a 7. But the plate on the toll violations started with a 5.
This wasn’t even my car! I thought. On a hunch, I went back to the file cabinet and pulled the 2010 Camaro file. The plate on the November-December 2020 toll violations, most for the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, matched that car. Now it really was déjà vu all over again.
It gets a lot worse.
I went to the DMV website to find out how to file a stolen-plate report. It said you first needed to get a police report, and you must order and pay for new plates when reporting the stolen ones. I called the Sheriff’s Department.
The deputy who called me back said he could not file a stolen plate report because these plates had never actually been stolen — they just weren’t re-registered. It was “a civil matter,” he said.
I wrote a letter to the DMV Investigations Unit in Brisbane, the office closest to the Bay Area, describing the situation. After about two weeks, Sgt. Christina Kutches called me back.
Despite my increasingly angry protests, the bottom line was: “There is nothing we can do,” she said. “It’s a ‘civil matter’” and the history of this car “must be maintained.”
She promised to send me a letter outlining my options. That letter had one option: I needed to hire an attorney and sue the new owner of the Camaro, and described how I could get help from Legal Aid if I couldn’t afford one.
I can see how that would work.
Attorney: “When did you sell this car?”
Me: “2010.”
Attorney: “Who’s driving the car now?”
Me: “I haven’t a clue.”
Attorney: “Where does he or she live?”
Me: “The Bay Area.”
For every day since November 30, I have received toll violations from Bay Area FasTrak, occasionally for two on the same day, most for late in the afternoon on the same bridge.
Fastrak said I had to dispute them by mail or online, showing documentation that I didn’t own the car, and that I should contact the DMV because FasTrak can’t do anything.
I’ve gotten about 60 $6 or $8 violation notices thus far, though I have lost count, and I am sure there are many more in the pipeline that haven’t arrived yet.
At first, they arrived in envelopes with six, eight or 10 separate notices, each with a 14-digit invoice number. That meant I had to file a dispute for each one individually, typing in the 14-digit number correctly each time and attaching a PDF file of the 2010 DMV release form and other docs to each one.
Then I’d get an email saying those violations have been canceled. But more continue to arrive in the mail, once or twice every week. When I forgot to dispute six of them once, I got another notice adding a $25 fine to each violation. It’s become comical, actually.
More recently, notices began arriving with eight or 10 violations listed on a single page with one invoice number, which makes my disputing them more of a part-time job. Maybe the angry letters I file with each dispute had some effect.
Then — a few days ago and for the first time — I received a batch of violations showing not just the license plate, but the plate and part of the hood of the car. (Why the change? No idea.)
There, on the hood clear as day is a stylized “H,” the symbol for Honda. I now can prove the plates I have had nothing to do with for nearly 11 years are on some model of a Honda, not a blue 1999 Chevy Camaro!
I have been trying to reach Sgt. Kutches from the DMV for a couple of days, and will try again. “Don’t you think, sergeant, that since these plates are on a car I have never owned or even driven, I can claim them as stolen and stop this merry-go-round?”
I am not holding my breath for her answer.
Addendum: I reached Sgt. Kutches Monday afternoon. Although the plates are now on a vehicle I have never owned, driven or even seen, she repeatedly told me nothing can be done. “How about listing the owner/user of the plates as ‘unknown?'” I asked. “Which would be true.”
“We don’t do that,” she said. “That’s not how it’s done.”
As nicely as I could, I told her about this Facebook post, and said I was going to send it to the Governor’s office, to Steve Gordon, director of the DMV, and to every media outlet in the Bay Area I can think of. After more than 30 years in the news business, I said, I’m pretty sure someone will pick it up.
“It’s not what I want,” I added, “but it’s just going to make the DMV look like it’s got its head up its ass. Is that what you want? Is there really no one who can help me fix this?” She said she would have her supervisor call me.
Sgt. Kutches called me Tuesday morning and said she had “looked into this issue a little further.” In doing so, she said, she discovered that the release of liability form I had filed with the DMV in 2010 somehow got unconnected to the license plates I once owned, perhaps during some kind of “purge” of DMV files each decade.
She said she was updating the system to add that information back. I would still have to dispute toll violations in the FasTrak system, she said, but once those are gone (I suspect about 40 of them could be still out there), I shouldn’t get any new ones.
At 2:40 p.m., I got a call from Marife (I think from DMV public affairs), who repeatedly apologized for what happened. She said she had contacted officials at FasTrak and was faxing them a copy of my release of liability form to make sure the toll violations in my name stopped.
I still have questions about these explanations. I pointed out to Marife that I had sent FasTrak that release form at least five times over the past 3 1/2 months. And why I still got toll violations notices in 2010 and 2011 when I filed the form after selling the car and got a copy of it from the DMV.
I also wonder how many others might be going through this kind of thing. I have never had a bad experience with the DMV before this, and even now have no animosity toward it or its employees. I am grateful it has finally chosen to seriously examine my case.
Finally, I also know that a reporter from the Union-Tribune called the DMV Monday to inquire about this issue, and was contacted again by the DMV Tuesday morning shortly before Sgt. Kutches called me. As I told the sergeant, I was getting ready to send it to media outlets all over the Bay Area. I don’t know how much these things prompted the DMV to “take a closer look,” but you can judge for yourself.
Jim Okerblom, a former editor and reporter for The San Diego Union-Tribune, lives in Escondido. A version of this essay originally appeared on Facebook.
