“Dear PoPville,
I’m wondering if anyone else in DC has experienced this — our legitimate DMV plates appear to have been duplicated and used on another vehicle.
Over the past few years, my wife and I have received multiple citations for a Honda minivan we don’t own, even though our plates have always been on our Jeep Grand Cherokee. DMV investigators told us this could be part of a larger fraud issue involving counterfeit metal plates being produced and sold — possibly using real DMV plate data.
A few years ago,
police even came to our home after finding a shot-up Jeep Grand Cherokee in Southeast DC with our exact plate number. We showed them our real Jeep sitting in front of our house — same plates, same make & model and the police officers were quite shocked.
After that incident and subsequent tickets, we surrendered our original plates to the DMV and were issued new ones, but the police report and DMV surrender documentation have since gone missing — apparently never filed properly by the DMV.
Now, we’re still getting ticket notices, and the DMV says we can’t renew our registration (due 10/23) until the outstanding fines are paid — even though the tickets are for a completely different vehicle. We’ve been told there’s “nothing they can do” since the hearing window to contest the tickets has expired, which feels absurd given that it’s not our car and our plates were never stolen.
Has anyone else dealt with this kind of plate duplication or DMV record mix-up? Is there any recourse beyond paying fines for someone else’s cloned tags? Between missing records, ongoing tickets, and the inability to renew registration, it’s been a nightmare — and the DMV has offered zero help.”