Strangers Racked Up A Half-Dozen Tickets In My Name, Now They’re About To Have A Bad Day

Four years ago, I sold a broken motorcycle to a young fella looking for his first bike. Somehow, I made a huge mistake by not removing the license plate from the bike. I’ve started receiving a stack of traffic tickets for a vehicle I haven’t owned in years and went through a huge headache of fighting Chicago and Illinois about them. I won, but the guys who have been selling my motorcycle are about to have a really bad day.

Buying and selling vehicles private party is already a massive thorn in the backside. People like to waste your time, insult you, or even threaten you over the pile of junk you’re just trying to offload for $900. Yet, we still do it because it’s not like a dealership is going to give you a decent price for your rustbucket.

Four years ago, I accidentally committed the worst mistake you could make in a private party transaction. In many parts of the United States, you should remove the license plates from a vehicle you sell. If you don’t and the person who bought your vehicle is a jerk, your world will get turned upside down. They’ll rack up tickets, but the sucker will be you as that’s where the tickets will go. That’s what happened to me over a broken 1980 Honda Gold Wing GL1100.

This Poor Motorcycle

One of my first motorcycles was that 1980 Honda Gold Wing. I bought it in 2018 from a man serving in our armed forces. He needed the money to pay for vehicle repairs and I wanted something bigger than the 2005 Honda Rebel 250 I spent a month riding. The owner lovingly restored the motorcycle and gave it fantastic metallic blue paint and a marvelous comfortable saddle. He also tossed out the Honda’s four individual carburetors for a single Weber unit meant for an air-cooled Volkswagen Beetle. My Honda didn’t have a working tachometer, ran richer than Elon Musk, and had no turn signals, but it was a great ride.

It remained a great ride for over a year. Then, toward the end of summer 2019, the motorcycle delivered a double whammy. The hearty flat-four engine blew its right side head gasket. Then the starter clutch started dying. I studied the repair process over that winter and decided that repairing my $900 steed wasn’t worth it. Even if I fixed the gasket and starter clutch issue, I still had to fix a sticking brake, rewire the turn indicators, and figure out why the carb was way out of tune.

I don’t really do this car and motorcycle thing to make money, but because it’s something I love. If I’m selling something, it’s because I no longer want the vehicle. Thus, I give my vehicles a price that I think is fair. I’m not going to ask you to pay $3,000 for something I know isn’t worth that. I listed my Gold Wing for a touch over $1,000 and was immediately inundated with hundreds of messages.

As usual with Facebook Marketplace, the vast majority of messages were lowballers, people who didn’t read the listing, and people who claimed to have interest just to never respond to messages. I’m pretty good at cutting through the nonsense and found a message from a prospective buyer asking me about how quickly the motorcycle burned through coolant.

He seemed satisfied enough that the motorcycle had repairable issues, but still ran and rode. The buyer came by after the Memorial Day weekend, paid me $1,000, and off he went. According to the buyer, the motorcycle was going to be given to a friend as their first bike. A chunky, temperamental Honda tourer isn’t the ideal beginner bike in my eye, but it’s not my money.

Some number of days after the transaction ended I realized that I couldn’t find the plate to the Honda. Did I lose the plate? Did I leave it on the bike? The buyer didn’t respond to my messages and I had no other way of contacting them or finding them. If this hasn’t happened to you, the big risk here is that the buyer can break a bunch of traffic laws with the vehicle you sold them and you will be the person on the hook for it, not them.

Thankfully, Illinois has safeguards for stuff like this. At the bottom of every Illinois title is a white slip that you fill out and then send in, confirming that you sold your vehicle. It’s also wise to fill out a bill of sale, which I did at the time of the sale.

I was frustrated that there was almost certainly going to be tickets coming in the mail, but they never came. Days turned into months and months turned into years. I never received anything from the state or any city, so it seemed that the buyer did the right thing and didn’t ride the motorcycle with my license plate. Either that, or the state must have received the white slip, right?

The Nightmare

I’ve now owned 60 or so vehicles in my life and all of the ones I no longer have were sold on Facebook. I regularly search Facebook for my old vehicles to see what’s up with them. I’m always curious to see if the person I sold my vehicle to actually fixed it or somehow made it worse.

Back in April, I found my old Honda by accident. At first, I was excited to see that my old Honda was running. I then laughed at the fact that while the starter and head gasket issues were fixed, many more issues cropped up over the four years the bike was no longer in my care.

Then I was shocked. The photos showed the old Honda still wearing my old license plate. I finally had the answer to the question of what happened to my plate. The subsequent owners didn’t even make an effort to hide the fact that the plate expired in 2019, right around the time the head gasket blew. My heart sank.

I did some digging and found out that my poor motorcycle was subject to a lot of title jumping, or the act of selling a vehicle more than once without titling it first. Title jumping is illegal in Illinois. The state doesn’t want you to sell a vehicle to one person and for that person to sell it to another person without the state getting its tax money first.

I have been able to follow the chain of ownership of my Honda to a certain extent. I know the guy who bought it from me gave it to another guy. Neither of the guys were the guy who was selling it in April. Of course, he then sold it to someone else. That’s at least four people who were legally required to title the motorcycle in their name before selling it again. And none of these guys ever bothered to remove the license plate from the bike.

Weirdly, I still wasn’t getting tickets in the mail, so I took screenshots, built up an ownership trail, and kept monitoring the situation. Sure enough, I started getting tickets in May. It still blows my mind that things were great for four whole years until some jerk bought the bike and started causing trouble in Chicago with a motorcycle that was still titled in my name. First, the guy got a speeding warning, then he got two speeding tickets, a street cleaning parking ticket, and an expired plate ticket. Then he blasted down the Interstate, racking up unpaid toll violations.

The City of Chicago Department of Finance started sending me letters. At first I was frustrated, thinking that I must have triggered one of the city’s infamously shady red light cameras. Then I remembered that I haven’t driven one of my own vehicles into Chicago in about a year. Even weirder was the fact that the letters were addressed to my old name, which hadn’t been my legal name for five years.

By my last count, the guy with my old Honda racked up over $200 in tickets owed to Chicago and perhaps a couple of hundred more owed to the Illinois Tollway. Paying these tickets isn’t a real option as the jerk with your plates will almost certainly keep on racking up tickets. Technically, you’re on the hook for their bad behavior, so of course they’re going to continue making your life hell.

You also cannot just ignore these tickets. Chicago will happily boot any vehicle that’s in your name. They’ll boot any car registered in your name, not just the one that has tickets piling up. And the Illinois State Toll Highway Authority has the state-granted power to suck you dry.

Now, I don’t like getting into the business of others, so I don’t care if you’re breaking the law if you’re not hurting someone. But this crosses the line.

Beating The Tickets

Thankfully, both Chicago and the Illinois Tollway have processes for situations like this, but as I can now tell you, it’s not easy or fun. It was even worse for me because it’s been years since I sold this vehicle. I could not find the bill of sale and it seems to be clear that Illinois either didn’t receive my white slip or it didn’t process it. This is a known problem with the Illinois Secretary of State and you should never bet on the state properly processing the little white slip.

Alright, so the white slip was sent into the ether and I don’t have a bill of sale. How do I prove that I haven’t owned this motorcycle in years?

First, I initiated the dispute process with Chicago. My lawyer and wife Sheryl recommends doing the dispute in person to have a greater chance at success. It’s easier to argue your case to an Administrative Law Judge’s face rather than through the Internet. So, that’s what we did. Now, Chicago is vague about how this process works. The city will give you “hearing options” which consist of a week in which you can visit the city and get a hearing. Now, the wording of this is poor. It makes you think that you have to choose a day in that week for your hearing, but the website doesn’t give you an option to do that. In reality, you just show up to a hearing facility during that week block.

Since I didn’t have the bill of sale anymore, I built up my case on other documents. I archived the timestamped conversation I had with the buyer. Thankfully, the buyer indicated in his messages that he enjoyed the motorcycle after buying it. I also had screenshots of the vehicle’s latest for sale ad, which clearly shows my old license plate and someone who isn’t me selling it. The listing even showed someone who wasn’t me riding it. I also reported the license plate as missing to my local police department. I even had an insurance document showing that I removed the vehicle from my policy in early 2020.

I proudly walked into one Chicago’s hearing facilities and that alone gave me a migraine. You have to visit clerk before you’re approved to go into a hearing room. The clerk I got on my hearing day didn’t seem to know what she was doing. I gave her the license plate number and she somehow pulled up a Ford F-150 owned by someone named Gonzales. Well, it’s a Honda and I’m not Gonzales. She put the plate in again and somehow produced a dozen tickets for various vehicles, none of them owned by me. From my observation, the issue was that she was entering in the plate as a passenger vehicle plate. She even showed amazement that my license plate was so short. I kept on telling her to enter the plate number as a motorcycle plate, but she dismissed that, assuming that I didn’t know what I was talking about.

Somehow, this continued for a whole 30 minutes or longer. Eventually, she figured out that I knew what I was talking about and I finally got a hearing room. Sadly, the proof I brought wasn’t enough. As I was told by a person representing the City of Chicago, if it is true that my title was jumped four times, both the city and the state will want to go after those four people.

Thus, simply reporting it to the local police wasn’t enough. The city wanted me to report it to the Secretary Of State Police. Further, the city also wanted me to go to a DMV facility to revoke the license plate. Apparently, the plate being four years expired isn’t enough.

Admittedly, I knew these were options, but I didn’t want to take them at first. As I said before, title jumping is illegal and both Chicago and the state seem to want heads to roll over this. I just want the tickets gone, I don’t necessarily want something bad to happen to these guys. But both the city and the state gave me no choice, so I revoked the plates and reported the situation to the Secretary Of State Police.

Bad News For An Old Honda

I then returned to Chicago this week, brought in receipts for everything, and the Administrative Law Judge dropped all of the tickets. In theory, my nightmare is over with Chicago. Next, I take the ruling I got from Chicago and give it to the state, hopefully releasing me from the toll violations.

However, this is not where the story will end. Revoking my old license plate and reporting it to the Secretary Of State Police puts a target on the motorcycle. The next time cops find the bike it’s not just getting a ticket, but impounded. The bike is worth about $900 and it’ll cost nearly that to get it out of the impound. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the bike in a police auction later on down the road.

Worse is likely coming for the guys involved. The state seems to be quite serious about investigating the title jumping and they have at least two names and locations from me to help facilitate it. I’ve been told that the consequences of title jumping range from fines to as hard as jail time depending on how bad things are. One thing’s for sure, if the state actually follows through with this, the subsequent owners of my old Honda are in for a bad time. Amazingly, it’s still titled in my name as of publishing.

What’s next for me? As I noted earlier, I take the decision from Chicago and give it to Illinois, hopefully absolving me of this nightmare. However, Sheryl is quick to point out that the governments of Chicago and Illinois are pretty incompetent, so I shouldn’t be surprised if another ticket comes in and I have to do this song and dance all over again.

One thing’s for sure. If you live in a place where plates do not follow the car, remove them before you sell the vehicle. If you screw everything else up in your sale, always remove the plate. If you don’t, you’ll be following my footsteps.

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