I could see it being an inside job, but my first thought went to human trafficking. Especially with the white van shown around the 2 min mark. Just old plates to pass on the streets so people don’t look twice.
@@B_Bodziak - The state police can enter the tags as stolen into their system now knowing that it was not destroyed. This way, any police officer running the tag will come up stolen.
Ironically in NY if you don’t turn in your plate you litteraly can’t cancel your insurance policy. If your insurance policy ends or you stop paying and it’s canceled without turning your plate in you are given a ticket without warning for lapsed insurance.
Here in North carolina, we have a personal property tax on automobiles. If you're not moving the plates to a new car, you have to turn in the plates and get a receipt to get your car removed from the property taxes
@@michaeldecker2725Louis Rossman has a RU-vid series where he fought some new York tickets - and some major incompetence. I'm guessing you haven't watched it?
@@dp4013 Plates are tied indefinitely to vehicles in every state. They don’t reissue numbers for this exact reason. So what state mailed tickets based off an old database? Not to mention the vehicle was completely wrong?
We have cameras in our state for toll roads. They Forever send tickets to people similar. Like, a passenger car getting a ticket for a Big Rig not paying a toll. Their cameras used to be very crappy. I flat out refuse to go on the toll roads. I got a ticket for a 35cent toll but the fine came to $20. It wasn't my car or my license plate but had my name. We had to drive 60 miles to go to court to fix it.
The first thing that springs to mind is that here, when we turn in our plates, the registration data is deleted, so this could not happen. Why is NY able to get the outdated registration from Iowa computers? Iowa needs to clean up their process.
@@kakerosa5466Sounds like Iowa DMV dropped the ball by not making sure those plates were destroyed. People will find use for them otherwise. Legal or illegal.
Likely it was a box or two of plates that were poorly stored and some enterprising BLM member found them recently. OFC they immediately thought of NY and it's millions of citation (only) cameras...
A simular incident happened to a friend of mine, someone painted license plate numbers that matched his plates he received a fine from a different state that he never went to as well. Took him weeks to straighten it out.
I had a similar situation with New York. I received multiple violations, from different agencies, for a white Ford van. These were temporary, Florida paper tags, that were issued to our dealership. They showed up 5 years after we closed down. It took many responses and phone calls to stop the threats from NYC.
Someone stole the classic plates off my van recently, I went to the tax office to get new ones and they said "sure we'll have yours re-printed and you'll get them in 2 weeks". Why the hell would I want the exact same plate if someone stole them, now there's 2 cars out there driving around with the same plate that makes no sense. I actually had to argue as to WHY I wanted new plates not re-printed ones
@@cgschow1971 You would think that but the receipt they gave me (which I had to pay $6 to have the plates re-printed) clearly showed the exact same plate number that was previously stolen, in Texas our windshield stickers have the plate number printed on it and they didn't give me a new sticker because they said the sticker would still match the re-printed plates and be valid until 4/2025. So yes they tried to reissue me the exact same plate # that was previously stolen
Classic plates are probably handled differently, much like personalized plates. You want a regular plate, you’ll get something random that they already have at the office.
@@UmmYeahOklooks like Texas does things different down there. If they weren't reprinting his plates, he would have been out the door with plates in his hands
@@russg9371yeah. The person at the DMV screwed up. When a plate is lost, if it’s a specialty plate, it has to be reprinted. But that’s not what they wanted. It was stolen, so the owner wanted a new, as in, completely different set. That requires filling out different forms. Essentially voiding the old plates, and then buying/registering new plates. More of a hassle, but it was probably more to do with miscommunication rather than laziness.
The major question here is why didn't Iowa remove those plates from their system when they were turned in which would have unattached them from the previous owners?
Yes, how are old plates attached to someone that got new plates even if you didn't return them if they weren't renewed wouldn't they fall out of the system?
I had some awesome friends who just liked to steal license plates from vehicles parked overnight by drunks at the night club next door to their apartment complex, and hang them on the wall. When the roommates went their separate ways, they had a license plate draft with the top picks being BOO 4AM and 419 BGT (Better Get Tokin').
I live in Texas and someone stole mine off an old motorhome that had not been driven since 1992. I got a bill a couple of years ago because someone put them on a Tahoe and went down the Toll Road nearby. I haven't ever been on that toll road and never owned a Tahoe. They corrected the bill.
that's why the rest of the country views texas as a shithole they wouldn't be caught dead in - maybe stop bashing on the mexicans and deal with the real problems assholes
They don't care about anything like this. Their only concern is advancing their own career and pocketing as much money as possible while doing so. I had the same thing happen with stolen plates and I was nearly arrested over it. I got lucky that the guy was caught with a bunch of license plates in another state. The state trooper that arrested him personally handled it for me because the local PD were going to arrest me for unpaid tickets if I didn't turn myself in within 24 hours. Without his help I would have been screwed because the local PD just didn't care that the plates didn't match the vehicle.
NY is notorious for this kind of behavior. A friend had a repair shop in NYC then moved it to Texas. He dissolved the old company and started a new one so they would not get confused. NYC sent him a fine for not having NYC workers comp insurance on employees in Texas. This is not all they have done and was the reason he moved.
My question is why those plates still tie to the original owner. If plates are turned in to the government, there should no longer be an owner or vehicle associated with them. If someone asks the Iowa DMV for the owner of a vehicle with that plate, it should come back unknown/unregistered, not with the names and addresses of people who turned them in. In addition to the issue of someone looting turned in plates for sale on the black market, the Iowa DMV could help its residents by updating its records.
That Govt for you. I found out last year I owned a 300K Rolls Royce that kept getting toll fines from Florida. Come to find out the real owner was in the DMV office when they registered the vehicle. Their DL # was 1 digit off from mine, so tell me with all that paperwork in front of a DMV worker why didnt the DMV notice the name was different when the made the typo...I never did get that answer from the DMV fraud division.
@@bestman7776 The information doesn't need to be removed, and NYC would be able to see it's not currently registered. NYC should not be ticketing off a photo when the plate hasn't been registered in a decade and is clearly attached to a different make/model vehicle. They just don't care. No one is going to penalize them for writing bad tickets to compel people to court to do the investigative work for them. So nope, it likely does come back unregistered.
This goes up the ladder at both Iowa's DMV & DOC. 12 years of having to purchase new aluminum for license plates. Who accounted for all that lost revenue from recycling fees?
NYS DMV no longer REQUIRES old license plates to be turned in to them, but left up to the motor vehicle owner to destroy them. Gee, what could possibly go wrong?
This is what happens when you have tolls like they have in NYC. Can’t really be surprised with how creative they are getting. I feel for these people that it happened to
I work for the courts and we’ve gotten so many folks that end up spending the 72 hrs in the pen for having weird driving charges that have warrants, and I’ve suspected for a long time, that this was happening. That the DMV, has been messing w plates for a while now. I almost got arrested when my plate was stolen and switched for someone else’s. Now, I look at my plate everyday. It’s the DMV they gotta look into.
In iowa you need to turn in the old plates in order to receive a refund for the portion of the year that went unused. I don't believe it's optional unless you want to write off that money.
Well you turn them in because each year if you go to renew your sticker. They will automatically charge you because they think that car is still in your possession. I had that happen on this Honda pilot I had gotten rid of two year ago but forgot to take them in. They thought I still owned that so when I paid online for the plates to my other cars they charged me for that Honda I hadn't owned for a few years when I took the plate in then that car was taken off the registry
And a lot of the things at flea markets are stolen. I had my hose and sprinkler stolen off my front yard. When I talked to the police as to why anyone would bother, they told me, "Where do you think all those hoses and sprinklers at the flea markets come from."
Im curious. How much do plates usually go for at those markets? Mine was stolen/or fell off the back of my car and Ive been paranoid about it ever since. Im wondering if thieves actually have enough financial incentive to seal them off of cars. BTW for anybody wondering, if you aren't 100% sure that your plate has been stolen off a current car that you use, DONT report it to the police until you are sure. You will not be able to drive that vehicle with the remaining plate on.
The exact same thing happened to me in Union County Georgia. I turned my tag in and six months later it showed up in New York. I believe my tag as well as around 125 others were sold after being turned in to our county tax office. These folks can upload a copy of their receipt for turning the tag in if they can still get one. My receipt is what cleared me. It was easy to do on the New York website. NYPD eventually seized my tag and destroyed it.
@rbryson07 exactly, and "eventually ceased the plate" but didn't mention that since it's New York they likely let the person with the plate on the car walk away without even giving them a ticket.
@@mrbyamile6973 Wut? One minute New York is chasing people half way across the country and the next minute they are letting them go. NYC has lower violent crime rates that a lot of places
If Iowa was not so insistent on receiving income from traffic cameras themselves, the simply solution would be to tell New York that they cannot collect their fines in Iowa. Minnesota did that with Illinois and their Tollway years ago and suddenly, the Tollway cleaned up their act.
Traffic camera’s? Where?! You talking about the sensors? Because I’ve yet to find a speed trap in iowa. Well, most of iowa. Some small towns are douches but that’s usually closer to Minnesota.
Minnesota is trying to change it. I haven't followed it up in awhile but there was a bill going through the state Senate authorizing the use of traffic cams for speed enforcement
@@russg9371 I have seen that but the question is, will such a law pass court scrutiny. I think the MN Supreme Court ruled years ago that traffic cameras were unconstitutional based on the state constitution (City of Minneapolis was using red light cameras) so my guess is that it would require the voters to change the rules to allow it (and I doubt the voters will do that).
traffic cams....I'm canadian, the way I see it is... They got a guy selling em for money, they were turned in right, means trash compacter... so they must of had plans to scam peopl with them later on when things blew over about how the plates went missing. I'm not surprised, you have many corrupt ppl leeding you. greed will leed them to hell... hope they know all the money in the world wont save them :-)
@@Tortilla.Reform Keep closing your eyes to reality! When it finally slaps, it’s gonna hit so hard you’ll have a schizophrenic episode with that level of cognitive dissonance! Fact-no one cares more about you than you, and no one is actually more interested in you than criminals and hackers for very obvious reasons🤑
Yeah all the advanced computers, space shuttles, medical and educational properties sure makes America a 3rd world, hell they’ve even got running water and electricity, now that’s poor
As absurd the charges may be, you know there will be people who will simply pay the fines just to move on with their day. I hope more victims of NY's incompetence will see this and get their money back.
ummmm, $300 in fines issued, which means that plate number is on the 'hot sheet' in new york and given to ALL RMP cruisers, yet they dont and havent pulled the van over despite catching it on traffic cam TWICE on the SAME street at different times on different days...something smells like something that came outta the east river here...outdated plates being sold to illegal immigrants, or human trafficking? someone in new york is covering something up here or being told not to stop the vehicles in question...40 plus plates are in question: my spidey sense tells me this is a bigger story than media is gonna be allowed to cover... why do i say that...the state of New York sent an 'e-mail' rather than an OFFICIAL LETTER to this family telling them the fine is being removed...arent we all told EVERYDAY to look at 'suspicious' e-mails as 'spam' or "phishing'? what state, what DOT office ANYWHERE sends an 'e-mail' as an 'official response saying they are quashing a lawful fine?
Your hatred is overthinking this. License plates being used by people who are tired of paying fines and fees from automated ticket cameras. Plus you realize that traffic cams aren't issuing tickets in real time right? That camera footage is analyzed later and tickets sent, so yeah it's not shocking that the vehicle was not pulled over despite being flagged twice on the same street in one day.
Same thing happened to someone I know. This person lived in New York state far from the city and the plates were surrendered to NYS DMV years ago. Then recently the NYC Dept of Fin, Violations Dept, sends this person the same violation notice and demand for payment. It showed a vehicle with their former plates on a completely different vehicle that had run red lights. When a letter from NY state DMV was faxed to them, showing the confirmation of plate surrender, NYC DOF still requested payment. It was not until they had a court hearing that the situation was resolved, but clearly they have a problem in NYC. Well....they have a lot of problems in NYC, but this is one more.
I don't understand how NYC can bill someone for plates from car that is no longer registered to them and obviously expired. Pure insanity. They better not send those fines to bill collectors.
You're asking how they all are counterfeit if they are all almost identical? Hahaha. That's literally a condition for being counterfeit. Are you a bot?
@@KB-kp2oz The wrong word was used. The plates were properly issued in Iowa, but were legally invalid for further use once turned in. Probably they were aluminum to be recycled for new plates, that never made it to the furnace. The real question is where the New York users were getting renewal stickers for them. Now those could be counterfeits.
People hang on to old plates all the time. The question is; why isn't the plate just completely removed from the system. Why is it coming back on a database? Obviously the numbers get regenerated at some point, but there should be a mandatory period before numbers are reissued.
My first reaction, "People turn in their plates? I didn't even know that was a thing and I've had cars in multiple states." Is that an Iowa law or something?
The Werefrog also kept the plates the last time they were changed, and live in Pottawattamie county. They said new plates needed this year. The Werefrog renewed by mail, and they mailed new plates. The old plates are sitting in the garage.
I work for a company that ships products out by independent trucking companies. On one occasion, a shipper still had hundreds if not thousands of license plates from a previous job still remaining inside their trailer. Innocent error at the time because, I'm sure, no one would suspect they could be used in commission of a crime
That's why I think they do it better in Puerto Rico; the plates belong to the car from the moment it leaves the dealer until it goes to die in the junkyard years later. Then, you remove it and keep it as a souvenir.
In Chicago, the private company who paid a flat rate to the city (not a typo) to install and monitor speed cameras (the company monitors the cameras and sends out tickets and the COMPANY keeps whatever fines they collect) got caught editing videos to make it look like people were speeding and running stop signs, etc. Gee, what could go wrong? Scammed me out of $200.
Just one more reason red light cameras and speed cameras should not exist. When you get a ticket from a city you have never been to. If they were to pull the vehicle over, the issue would be resolved rather quickly with the person that was driving getting their vehicle impounded.
Are you serious someone in Iowa sold them to someone you don't even necessarily know the person was in New York New York was the final destination but you need to look at yourself first before you start casting stones
Yes, Iowa didn't bother to decommission/reassign numbers, an Iowa county treasurer saying, "I just assumed" while holding a bunch of case documents, someone from Iowa moved the plates - and it's all NY's fault. How do you know that Iowa hasn't responded to a NY request? Did the paperwork the couple get tell them how to rectify the problem that included Iowa doing some work as well? You don't know. You just listen to a little bit of information and blame the "liberal state."
@@user-wf8ol5hv6k doesn't matter who's asking for the fines to be paid someone in Iowa is DOC sold the plates after they took them from the treasurer You don't know who they sold them to or where and where they ended up is like any other stolen property could end up anywhere You can't blame the final destination Iowa needs to investigate its department of corrections see who took custody of the plates and they're the ones who sold them They need to start questioning them.
When I went to trade school in Ohio, the plates stayed with the the person they were registered to. Not the car. So if you bought another car, the plates and registration would be updated for the new car, and you put the old plates on your new car. I actually live in Alaska. Up here, you can get new plates every two years, and there's no 'turn in old plates' policy. So you can do what ever you want with the old plates. Also in Alaska, if your vehicle is 10+ yrs old, it costs $215 bucks for a lifetime registration. No more DMV visits unless you really do need new plates. But you can also get replacements mailed to you.
You can but if you go online to pay for the yearly sticker they will automatically charge you another year on that car even if you had sold it years ago. The DMV thinks that car still belongs to you.
Since the county issues the plates, the county is the one that decides whether they want them back after expiration. Most counties in Iowa don't have this requirement, my Polk County plates are sitting in my bedroom after I moved to South Dakota
Texas' toll operator does things like this too. I got an invoice from them with a picture of a plate with the same numbers as mine, but the angle hid what state was on the tag. And it was a different kind of car. And I hadn't been in Texas with my car in years. Bottom line, these toll operators are committing federal invoice fraud by doing no due diligence and demanding payment from you when you didn't incur the fee.
as a license plate collector, this is really easy to do. You can get old plates for cheap and put them on your vehicle quite easily. Could be an inside job as well, but it's not difficult to get your hands on old plates. Just saying.
It's funny how the accused in legally sanctioned extortion is always guilty until proven innocent. If the city was responsibly for the accused legal costs and loss of wages to sort it out, I bet they would spend a few more minutes to make sure they got it right.
Don't you think a news team would actually report on what the scheme was if they knew the "real story"? News channels live for such things. I didn't need the news team to tell me "we think something illegal happened in Iowa". That's pretty obvious from the story. In the video it was mentioned the plates get turned over to the department of corrections for recycling as standard procedure. How do you know your "real story" is accurate? It could very well be someone at the department of corrections instead of the dmv who is the culprit in Iowa here.
It's happened to me before! I turned it in to motor vehicles and SOMEHOW the plates got out and I was getting parking tickets in NYC! So I decided the next time I have to surrender plates, I'd breakem' in half. Motor Vehicles tells me "oh no, you can't do that". Well how else can I be assured that they won't get out again?
We had this happen,the plates had been on a car we took to the salvage yard. It took almost 2 yrs to get it straitened out . Ours were Pennsylvania plates
I live in Brooklyn, not far from where that picture was snapped. I've seen this exact van on the street in that area of Brooklyn, off of Linden Boulevard. It's the only Iowa plated vehicle. I recognize that county name and the first numbers.
people are getting fed up with these organizations not doing their own due diligence. these plates should have been destroyed immediately. good job Iowa for failing to do your one job.
It was a thing. It is still a thing in some places. Generally it's a bad idea to steal plates these days because a competent state will mark the plate as stolen and issue a new plate number to the victim. That plate now gets flagged as hot on numerous roadway scanners mounted on bridges, cop cards, highways and more. All around bad idea. In NYS, pretty much every cop has plate scanners on their car now. They can and do ticket you for expired inspections without having to even go car to car on foot to check. Lol
