Glock Talk banner

Do You See Many Fabricated License Plates?

1K views 21 replies 17 participants last post by  Sam Spade 
#1 ·
I am curious b/c of a discussion on a different site involving unsolved rapes. Two officers on surveillance saw a young man driving slowly by a young woman in a park and peering intently. The second time he drove by they took the plate #...and found it was never issued..

That was it. No further action, b/c the guy did not come back a third time.I understand they could not leave their position but couldn't they put it on the air?

I have no idea of LEO procedures..so I want to ask-maybe a false plate is common? So it would not be a red flag?

Thank you for your time.
 
#5 ·
There have been problems with records keeping so I had to deal with those problems like one plate belonging to two vehicles or a plate not in the system. However, the plates were real, but something went wrong somewhere. I've dealt with wrong plates where people willfully or accidentally put the plates on a vehicle which they don't belong.

I have seen actual fictitious plates before, but they are just the Euro kind people order on-line which has the correct registration for the vehicle - they just aren't issued by a government entity. The other type are homemade temporary dealer plates.

Also, I had a guy with a fake registration sticker on the windshield which was twice the correct size, and I even think he may have done it with a crayon. Oh, and I've stopped COUNTLESS vehicles with fictitious registration and motor vehicle inspection windshield stickers back in the '90s and 2000s, but it died down in my last several years...or I just wasn't catching them.
 
#8 ·
I don't think they would divert resources..just put the car description and plate on the air-and if an officer saw it he could do a stop, check ID. check registration Etc. The subject of the surveillance, a still unknown rapist, is probably the most prolific in U.S. history.

I appreciate the responses...I had no idea false plates exist.
 
#14 ·
Or DMV error. I bought car (private party). We met at DMV did paperwork, lic transfer... They messed up. Got supervisor involved to do override... "It's all fixed"
Months later, couple trips to CO... I am parked 1am and Cop runs plate. Comes back to different type car, reson, city...
Lucky I know Officer. She tells me to get DMV to fix. IF I had been stopped out of state, 2 am I likely would have gotten free room for night.

Then again I was changing plates on pickup. Something happened. Over yr later I realized I had different plates front, back...
 
#15 ·
I impounded a sort of 'phoney' tag. It was the proper number for that car, but the tag had been cancelled and taken buy the Dept. of Motor Vehicles, (DMV) The owner had gone to a sign place and had a copy of the tag made of vacuformed plastic. It looked good but just not quite right.
The woman told me she'd been stopped before but I was the first to see the fake for what it was.
 
#16 ·
I was pulled over for having stolen/wrong plates on my truck. I bought the truck from a dealership, and used plates from old truck. All I can figure is that somewhere in there the proper paperwork was not filed and the plates were re-issued to someone else. The police were understanding, issued me a ticket for expired registration and when I went to court with current registration the charges were dismissed. I forget if I even had to explain what happened in court, but it was no big deal.
At first, the officers that had pulled me over were kind of aggressive. They backed of after talking to me for a bit and realized that this was a mi-understanding. I had a license, insurance, and even paperwork to show that the plates were mine.
In Wisconsin there is a plate available if your vehicle is 25 years or older. One time fee, not that much. Restrictions are that vehicle is older then 25 years, must have another vehicle registered in your name in state, cannot use vehicle in February. I have seen a Mustang around with one of those plates on it that while I am not sure of the year exactly, they did not start making the particular body style until 1993, so i do not need dmv access to know that is wrong, somehow.
 
#18 ·
We had a guy who worked with us who did part-time work with the County...he'd drive around the parking lots of businesses and check the cars parked in marked Handicapped spots to see if they either had Handicapped tags or a Handicapped Parking Permit hanging off their rear view. Those who he found parked in these spots in violation would receive a ticket under their wiper blade, and a further citation in the mail complete with a Polaroid copy of their vehicle clearly parked in a marked Handicapped spot, identified by their tag#. For every image and ticket combination he would receive $5 from the county.

One day he was at the mall and ticketed a violater, who soon returned to his vehicle and promtly tore up the ticket and walked back into the mall, with my coworker in close persuit, I believe hoping to snap a picture of the offender, which he lost inside the store.

No matter he thought, because he had the photo and carbon copy of the ticket, which he later submitted to the County with others. Much to his dismay he never received the $5 for that particular ticket from the County, so being the cheap bastage that he was he marched right down to the County building demanding to know why he didn't get paid for that ticket. He was informed that he didn't get paid because no such license plate existed...he told them BS he saw it and it was a real raised letter plate complete with the State hologram sticker, to which they replied rather quietly, "We know...it's a letter agency plate, and yes, we know about the person you followed and they weren't very happy, so I'd strongly suggest that you just let it go."

Secret squirrel stuff fer sure...
 
#19 ·
In Texas because of our Temp tag system, we have a ton of fictitious plates on the road. If you know what to look for, they arent hard to spot. Heck, I even taught my wife and now we play find the fakes everytime we are driving around.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Ftttu
#20 ·
Let's see:
- Earlier this year the Colorado DMV admitted to having issued the same plate numbers to multiple people, an unknown number of times. That only came to light when the C470 toll road cameras kept billing someone who had never taken that car to the toll road, and their car looked nothing like the truck...that was also 'properly' registered.

- Multiple states use a similar format of "ABC123" or "123ABC" on their plates. They may have read the plate correctly but from a different state. I know Colorado and Florida are horrible offenders with over 100 styles of license plates in each state.

- Sovereign citizens or other anti-governmental types are certainly possible.

- Colorado went over to a new temporary license plate a few years ago; it's not hard to duplicate using a scanner and MS-Word... Colorado DMV was proud to point out that the vehicle description (make, model, color, VIN) is also on the temporary license plate...but there's no security strip on the paper tag, and they get duplicated/modified all the time. Usually that's either an effort to keep their expired-registered vehicle on the road a little longer, or it's on a stolen car of similar genre.

- Plus...older (expired) plates are sometimes put back on cars - depending on the state registry, the plate shows up as "no record" even though it was once valid.
 
#22 ·
Must be something in the water in AZ. The sovereign kooks are out in force and I've had maybe 3 in the last few years. They looked something like this:

 
You have insufficient privileges to reply here.
Top