Woman mistakenly gets car boot 4 times

From CBS 2:

A case of mistaken car identity has led to intense frustration for a Queens woman whose car keeps getting the boot.

As CBS2’s Weijia Jiang reported, when Brigitta Wareham walks to her car, “I have knots in my stomach every time.”

She said she is sick over the thought of having her car booted again.

“I’m mad. I’m worse than frustrated,” she said.

New York City boots cars when owners owe $350 or more in unpaid parking tickets. But Wareham owes nothing.

Yet in less than two years, the Sheriff’s Office has booted her car four times by mistake, Jiang reported.

“I want that clear – by mistake. I didn’t have any tickets, and don’t have any tickets, and they did it by mistake,” Wareham said.

The city’s Department of Finance oversees parking violations. A spokesperson said Wareham is the victim of “human error.”

DSNY harassing innocent citizens with bogus tickets

From the NY Post:

Levy Zelishovsky, 72, received the avalanche of summonses at his Midwood office April 5 for supposedly illegally posting fliers advertising a moving company on public lampposts throughout Brooklyn. Each summons carries a $75 fine.

The problem, Zelishovsky said, is that he is not and never has been in the moving business.

It turns out that the mix-up occurred because the Department of Sanitation had apparently only done a reverse check on the phone number on the fliers, which led them to Zelishovsky.

The DOS said it has since learned that the phone number is Zelishovsky's old number, which he hasn't used since 2006.

Zelishovsky claims he's had the same phone number for 25 years and that he never owned the phone number on the flier.

He must still appear before a judge at the Environmental Control Board hearing April 29 to officially sort things out, although the DOS says it plans to write to the judge recommending that the summonses be voided.

Bloomberg's parking judges out to screw us all

From Fox 5:

Mike and his wife Amy are understandably frustrated. A judge at Parking Violations ordered Mike to pay for tickets a UPS truck is getting.

"I feel it isn't fair," Mike said. "I'm basically being judged to pay something that isn't mine."

Fox 5 talked to the UPS driver.

"Do you mean to say he's actually getting my tickets or something like that?" he said.

Mike, the fellow ordered to pay the tickets, isn't the driver, and has nothing to do with the UPS truck. The UPS guy said his truck gets tickets regularly.

"I get maybe one or two tickets a day," he said.

Yet the bills for some of those tickets are going to Mike Godoy, a Marine and Iraq war veteran. He and Amy, a Brooklyn teacher, feel helpless.

"I'm really worried," Amy said. "We just got married and this is very stressful."

They regularly find late payment notices for the UPS truck's parking tickets in their mailbox.

"I started getting tickets in the mail with late fees and double parking," Mike said. "I didn't even recognize the license plate at first."

Turns out the license plate on the UPS truck ends in JY. But the ticket-writer is putting down something that looks more like JX.

"It seems like the officer is writing sloppy," Mike said.

And that sloppy mistake -- that JX -- traces to a license plate that the Department of Motor Vehicles said Mike once had, but turned in 2007. Although the plates were destroyed, the listing and the connection to Mike remain in the state computer.

Judge turns the table on debt collector

From the NY Times:

The phone rang. A woman from a law firm representing a collection agency wanted to know if Mark Hoyte was Mark Hoyte, and he said he was. They were calling to collect.

Mr. Hoyte said he never had that credit card.

Then the woman wanted to know if his Social Security number ended in 92, and Mr. Hoyte said no, it ended in 33.

“She says to me, ‘Your date of birth is in 1972,’ ” Mr. Hoyte, 46, recalled in an interview.

Clearly, they had the wrong Mark Hoyte. But that did not stop the lawyers at Pressler & Pressler from suing him. They swore out a complaint and sent a summons to Mr. Hoyte, ordering him to be in court last Monday.

Then things took a rare turn.

The judge turned to Mr. Hoyte, who works as a building superintendent, and asked him how much a day of lost pay would cost. Mr. Hoyte said $115.

“Do you think that’s fair?” Judge Dear asked Mr. Wang. “That he should lose a day’s pay?”

“My personal opinion,” Mr. Wang said, “would not be relevant to the application being sought.”

The judge said he was prepared to dismiss the case and wanted Mr. Hoyte compensated for lost wages.

It could happen to you

From Fox 5:

A Brooklyn woman says that her credit and her life have been ruined all because of a case of mistaken identity.

Rachel Lindor says her financial life began to unravel in 2006 when she discovered that a default judgment had been entered against her because someone named "Raqul Lindor" owed thousands of dollars.

She thought that she could clear up the mess by explaining to the creditors and the collection agency that she was not "Raqul" -- but no one believed her.

She lost her financial aid at Penn State and had to drop out of school. The mess triggered a chain of events that have cost her an education and her financial well-being.