An 87-year-old woman in California was confused when she started to receive parking tickets and toll notices in the mail. She had 18 separate tickets, with a total of almost $1500 in fines. Was she racking up tickets and forgetting to pay? No, and she could prove it: she no longer drives at all. The tickets listed her as the owner of a white Acura, and she doesn’t own one.

Where were the tickets coming from, then? The answer is mundane and infuriating. The woman receiving the tickets once bought a Lexus from a local dealership. This put her name and address in their database. Years later, another woman with the same first and last name bought the mysterious white Acura from the same dealership, and they just listed the first customer as the owner of the new Acura. Then the new car owner apparently went on a spree of very minor traffic crimes.

CBS Sacramento got involved after the non-driver spent a year fighting the tickets and the non-existence of the Acura. While the dealership assured her and the TV station that everything had been resolved, she continued to get bills from two cities and a local toll authority. These bills also went away thanks to intervention from the TV reporters.

Call Kurtis: I Don’t Drive, FasTrak, So Stop Ticketing Me! [CBS Sacramento]

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