London
5 °C
Manchester
Glasgow
5 °C
Dublin
4 °C
Belfast
Washington
18 °C
Denver
20 °C
Atlanta
Dallas
Houston Texas
New Orleans
24 °C
El Paso
Phoenix
Los Angeles
12 °C
5 °C
-11 °C
17 °C
11 °C
New York Woman Faces $40,000 in Fines Due to 'BLANK' License Plate
New York Woman Faces $40,000 in Fines Due to 'BLANK' License Plate
A New York woman has been forced to surrender her custom license plate after accumulating more than $40,000 in parking fines. Carole Blank Brown’s vanity tag, which read 'BLANK,' caused a bureaucratic error where tickets issued to vehicles without plates were incorrectly assigned to her account.
Carole Blank Brown, a 70-year-old self-employed lawyer from New York, has been forced to surrender her custom license plate after discovering she was responsible for more than $40,000 in parking violations. The financial burden stemmed from a bureaucratic error linked to her vanity tag, which read "BLANK."
Brown selected the four-letter sequence approximately 40 years ago as an innocent and somewhat humorous choice for her red BMW convertible. However, the decision has resulted in significant consequences due to how New York City parking enforcement officers process violations.
According to reports from The New York Times, the issue arises when law enforcement officers issue tickets to vehicles that do not have license plates attached or visible. In these instances, officers leave the license plate field on the violation write-up blank. Because Brown’s plate literally read "BLANK," the system automatically attributed these untagged violations to her account.
Brown remained unaware of the accumulating debt until she recently moved and updated her address for vehicle registration. At that time, she discovered that what began as two outstanding tickets had grown into more than 400 violations. The total fines exceeded $40,000.
The situation is complicated by the geographic distribution of the violations. Because the tickets were issued across various locations in New York City, Brown could not resolve them at a single office. She was required to visit multiple bureaus and appear before different judges to have the tickets voided under her license plate.
Brown’s case mirrors a similar incident involving a computer programmer in California who accumulated $12,000 in fines after choosing a vanity plate that read "NULL." In that instance, untagged vehicles were also incorrectly assigned to his account.
Following the discovery of the errors, Brown surrendered her license plate. The New York Department of Motor Vehicles has removed "BLANK" from the list of approved vanity plates, preventing other residents from selecting the same sequence.
Brown has since obtained a new custom license plate reading "KNALB," which is "BLANK" spelled backward. She continues to navigate the process of clearing her record while dealing with the administrative fallout of the long-standing error.
I.Wroblewski--GL
