A man has taken to TikTok to reveal that the license plate fell off his car, and he had assumed that the plate had simply fallen off. He didn’t realize where it had ended up until he got a toll bill from a state he didn’t live in.
TikTok user Jay (@.jaydave) shared what happened in a viral video with more than 361,200 views. His caption reads “lowkey screwed,” and he revealed in the video that the license plate was actually stolen.
“Two years ago one of my license plates fell off my car, at least I thought it fell off,” he said in the video. “I was like, oh whatever, front plate’s gone, it’s looking smoother with no plate anyway, so I’ll just rock with that,” added the TikTok user. That couldn’t have been further from the truth.
It wasn’t long after that he got the toll bill through the post. This really baffled him. “I don’t live in Massachusetts; I live in Rhode Island,” he said in his TikTok video. It transpired he hadn’t even been through the toll, as he had been at work. It was then he started to discover the truth.
Jay Soon Learned What Had Happened
@.jaydave Lowkey screwed #license #police #car ♬ original sound – Jay
The bill had come from EZ-Pass Massachusetts, which led him to check his own movements after he got the bill. “I found out I indeed did not go through that toll. I made sure I was at work during the time that it was committed,” he said. Getting on the phone for answers didn’t help either, as it took him forever to get through to a human, but then he started to get some answers.
It turned out his license plate had been photographed on a Ford F-150 at the toll booth. “I have never owned an F-150, nor do I ever plan on it,” he said. “So I promise you that wasn’t me. What do I do now?” Well, as it transpired, Jay had to file a dispute over someone else running a toll with his license plate. But he was mostly annoyed at the fact that he didn’t report his license plate as stolen when he realized it had vanished.
“Somebody out there has my license plate now, and that’s really bad. I never reported that [expletive]; it was never reported missing,” said the TikTok user. “So now, if they commit a crime with that, yeah, it’s not my car, but they have my license plate. It’s going to trace back to me.” It quickly dawned on Jay that someone had indeed stolen his license plate.
What Happened After the Toll Violation Was Reported?
Massachusetts regulation places much of the onus on the person to whom the plate belongs, which in this instance perhaps feels a little harsh. State law says “the registered owner of record of the motor vehicle is prima facie responsible for the payment of the tolls, fees, fines and/or penalties” for unpaid tolls. It also states that the owner has to have reported the vehicle as stolen as soon as possible, and that it was stolen when the toll was charged.
Sadly for Jay, he couldn’t get things sorted with E-ZPass. He appealed the bill, but they simply denied it because it was his license plate. The only way he could prove it wasn’t him, according to the toll company, was with a police report. Thankfully, Jay did confirm in his video that he is on the case and, at the time of writing, he is attempting to get a proper police report to get the toll bill overturned and to stop whoever is using his license plate.