Here’s Why You Never Give A Stranger Your Old License Plate

Four years ago, I made a critical error in what was otherwise a normal, boring private sale of an old motorcycle. A guy bought my 1980 Honda Gold Wing as his first motorcycle. The man rode away with my license plate and I didn’t realize it until it was too late, yet nothing bad happened. Now, all of this time later, the motorcycle is finally coming back to bite me. The Honda has been passed on to at least four more people over the past four years, and none of them have bothered to title the bike in their name or take my plate off. Now I’m getting tickets in the mail. I’m not paying them. Instead, I’m going to fight back.

Loving cars and motorcycles like I do is a blessing and a curse. Between cars, motorcycles, and buses I’ve owned over 60 vehicles in my life. That’s a lot of buying and selling. If you think selling one or two hoopties on Facebook is bad, imagine having sold dozens of vehicles to the denizens of your state. I’ve seen it all from death threats and accused crimes to even proposals from thirsty men. Calling me pretty may make me blush, but you’re still paying $1,500 for my garbage Volkswagen.

I’ve learned a lot of lessons along the way. I stopped giving my real address after the death threat and I try to do transactions in public places if I can. I always make sure my wife is present and nothing leaves my sight without cash in hand and a bill of sale. If the buyer is trying to come from a state or two away, I have to determine that they’re super serious, otherwise, I’d rather sell to someone somewhat nearby.

All of these lessons have been learned through bad experiences. Something I learned early on was that you should remove your license plate from the vehicle. And if you’re the buyer and the seller leaves you with their plate, the responsible thing to do is discard them. But if that happened, I wouldn’t be writing about this broken Honda Gold Wing. Now I’m in big trouble.

The Bike

The year is 2020. It’s the summer and I’ve been riding motorcycles for two years. My first and second bikes, which were purchased at about the same time, were a Buell Blast and a Honda Rebel 250. I grew out of those motorcycles within a couple of months and sold both of them. In their stead was my third motorcycle, a 1982 Suzuki GS850G, and my fourth motorcycle, a 1980 Honda Gold Wing.

I hit my newfound motorcycle passion running. Throughout 2018, 2019, and 2020, I purchased countless broken and barn find motorcycles, revived them, and then sold them. I didn’t do it for profit but just for the fun of it. Besides, it was a fantastic way to experience a bunch of vintage Japanese motorcycles in a rapid-fire manner. Through all of this, the Suzuki and the Honda remained my daily riders.

As the Honda’s story goes, the owner before me picked up the bike in a sorry state. He restored the bike to running order, giving it beautiful blue paint and a cushy seat. The motorcycle started life as a dresser, but he stripped it down to a naked wonder. He even simplified the fuel system. Old Gold Wings have four carbs laid out across the boxer engine and maintaining them can be a pain. So, a somewhat popular mod is tossing the four carbs in the garbage for one large carb meant for an air-cooled VW Beetle. This bike had that!

Sadly, the restorer never got to spend too much time with his motorcycle because he had to leave home to live on a military base. While there, he crashed his car, and the bike had to go to pay for repairs. That’s where I came in. I picked it up for $900 and rode away happy.

Things were great for a while, but then the motorcycle began having issues starting. Some research revealed that the starter clutch was going. While that was happening, fuel economy was an atrocious 28 mpg and the front brake began sticking. I was going to fix all of this, but the nail in the coffin was when I was hours away in central Wisconsin and the right head gasket blew in spectacular manner.

Thankfully, I made it home, where I started looking into how to repair all of this. The poor fuel economy was because the motorcycle was running richer than Bill Gates, but so far as I could tell, the carb was fine. It just wasn’t the right carb for the job. The starter and head gasket problems would have required the motorcycle to come into multiple pieces. I didn’t have a garage of any kind at the time, so that wasn’t going to fly. Instead, I listed it for sale.

The Sale

Selling the motorcycle was almost too easy. I listed it for sale for about what I paid and the messages poured in. One of the prospective buyers wanted to get the motorcycle right away and he offered me exactly what I wanted to sell the motorcycle for. His plan was to fix the issues and use it as a first bike. Admittedly, I probably wouldn’t use an old Gold Wing as a first motorcycle, but it’s not my business if that was the route he wanted to take.

The guy came by one Sunday afternoon and took the Honda for a spin. He noted the issues and the bike seemed solid enough for him. We exchanged cash, filled out a bill of sale, filled out the title, and then we both went on our way.

It wasn’t until days later that I realized I made a critical error. I did everything I should have but removed the license plate. I heard horror stories of people committing crimes with vehicles registered to other people. I didn’t want that to happen to me, but it was too late. He was gone and I couldn’t find his information to contact or find him. My lousy bill of sale didn’t even have his address or phone number.

I was extremely hard on myself, and maybe rightfully so. I sold enough vehicles by that point that removing a license plate should have been instinct. But I was a bonehead and didn’t do it.

The state of Illinois does offer some protection when this happens. At the bottom of every new Illinois title is a slip of paper that notifies the state when your vehicle changes hands. Well, that’s what it does in theory, anyway. You fill it out and mail it in. If you’re lucky, the state will go after the goober racking up fines with your plates rather than go after you.

Unfortunately, in my experience either these little slips of paper never make it to the state or the state doesn’t process them, so they’re just as worthless as the paper they’re printed on. Still, it seemed like everything was fine. Weeks turned into months and months turned into years. I never got a ticket or heard anything bad about my old bike. Maybe the buyer did the right thing and tossed the plate when they got home.

I Didn’t Knock On Wood

Well, maybe I shouldn’t have gotten too comfortable.

When I’m bored, I check Facebook Marketplace for vehicles I sold in the past. I like to see what has happened to them. Sometimes I luck out and find my old vehicle, just to learn that the vehicle was fixed or blew up because the buyer didn’t listen to me. Oh well.

Things were different in April. I saw my old Gold Wing pop up for sale. Based on the listing’s description, someone fixed the head gasket and the starter, but let the bike fall apart everywhere else. The video attached to the ad showed that the bike ran like total dog crap, worse than when I owned it.

My fascination with the Honda’s condition was cut short when I saw the rear of the bike. I remember my license plates and the one in the ad was one I hadn’t seen for four years. Yep, this guy was riding around on my license plate, which by that time had been expired for five years. I then started digging into the seller and the guy I sold it to.

By my count, the guy I sold the Honda to gave it to another guy. That guy may have sold it to the guy who sold the Honda in April. That’s at least four changes in ownership since I had it and there could have been even more ownership links I’m missing. None of these four or more guys ever bothered to title the bike or remove my license plate from it.

How do I know? Yesterday, I received two letters from the City of Chicago Department of Finance. At first, I was going to breathe a saddened sigh that I must have gotten tagged by Chicago’s infamously shady red light cameras. But then I remembered that I hadn’t taken one of my own vehicles into Chicago this year. Furthermore, the letters addressed me by my dead name, a name I haven’t been legally tied to for at least five years.

It suddenly made sense when I cracked open the letters. The fourth owner (at least), since I sold the Honda, is now riding around the city on my plates. They earned two tickets: One for the super expired plate and one for parking on a street on a street cleaning day. Two fines racking up a total of $120 addressed to yours truly.

The Problem

In theory, I could just pay these tickets and go on with my life. Some people might do just that, effectively punishing themselves for leaving a plate on a sold vehicle. Some people might decide to ignore the tickets because it’s not their vehicle anymore, so it shouldn’t be their problem. Both of these are the wrong move.

If someone is willing to get tickets in your name, they will be willing to rack up more. You will never stop paying for tickets. And if the person is running tolls, and I’m certain this person is, your fines will get expensive quickly. I’m waiting for the toll violations to roll in.

If you ignore these tickets, now you have another big problem. If you get enough unpaid tickets, the City of Chicago will boot your car the next time an officer sees it. And I mean they’ll boot any car registered in your name, not just the one that has tickets piling up. You also don’t want to screw with the Illinois State Toll Highway Authority, which has the power to ruin your life in a jiffy.

So, the only path forward is to prove that I sold the bike and people have been jumping my title. Here’s where my wife and lawyer come in. Chicago gives you the ability to contest tickets either online, by mail, or in person. Sheryl says that for a case as complex as this, you don’t want to take chances doing things online or by mail. You need to argue your case in person.

Unfortunately for me, the little slip of paper that I sent to the state clearly never made it or was never processed. It’s been four years since then, so who knows where it is now. In another bonehead move, I also lost my bill of sale. Thankfully, I do take frequent screenshots and can do some solid research. I have proof I sold the motorcycle in 2020 and proof someone else was selling it in April 2024. I don’t know who bought the bike in April, but as Sheryl tells me, that’s going to be the seller’s problem, not mine.

So, sometime in the near future I will have to enter a stuffy government building in Chicago to fight my case. While Sheryl is confident I can get out of these two tickets, the future is uncertain. In her experience, the city often doesn’t update its records in cases like these. If Chicago never updates that license plate in its systems, I will continue to get tickets and will have to fight every single one. Meanwhile, the guy running on my plate gets to do whatever he wants because legally, it’s still my motorcycle, not his.

Another side annoyance is the fact that Chicago is not allowing me to contest these tickets in my legal name, but the name written on the violation. So, that’s going to be fun.

Then there’s the tollway violations I’ll inevitably get. I’ll have to fight the state itself to get out of those, and the state really doesn’t like being told it’s wrong. If I continue to get tickets, the nuclear option will be to sue the latest seller. After all, jumping titles four times is pretty illegal. Sheryl says I can also report the license plate as lost or stolen, which will spell bad news to the guy racking up tickets in my name.

This is all a long way of saying that I made a small mistake that is biting me hard four years later. There’s a whole lot of suck coming and it could have been prevented. Always remove license plates before selling your vehicle to a stranger. And if you’re the buyer, don’t take license plates as permission to do whatever you want. Remove those plates and toss them, destroy them, hang them on a wall, or turn them into floorboards. Do anything but ruin that previous owner’s summer.

As for my situation, this is only heating up. I will go through the entire headache of fixing this so that maybe, you’ll have an easier time going through it, too.