Replies

I have a friend that lost his wallet in New York City some 30 yrs ago. He has live in California with his CA license until 2 yrs ago. He moved to another state & they showed a unpaid speeding violation back 30 yrs ago in the state of Connecticut. He has never been in that state & the fines are so horrendous that he now is driving w/o a license. That really sucks.

Something similar happened to me about 20 years ago. I live in NY and our licenses used to have no picture. I used to travel alot and somehow my license was lost, and I didn't realize it for almost six months until I was coming back into the states, at the Rainbow Bridge in Niagara Falls, and the guy in the booth informs me that I have a bench warrant in Gloversville, NY that I better take care of. Fortunately, he didn't detain me or call the state police.

To make a long story short, I ended up going to court there 3 times, the last time with a lawyer, and I ended up splitting $1200 in fines with the owner of the car which the tickets were issued to. Apparently, somebody there ended up with my license--I had never been there before this--and they got a pile of tickets in this lady's car.

She claimed that it must have been somebody who was joyriding in her car. I thought I was off the hook the first time I went to court and met with the prosecutor when the sheriff said that I wasn't the person he gave the tickets to. I had my Passport for ID. But the small town prosecutor and judge didn't care and said I was fully responsible for any use of the document since I didn't report it missing. Basically, the lawyer told me that they didn't care who they got the money from, but they were going to get it before they let me off the hook. The lawyer was able to convince the judge to split it between us. I paid the court $600, the lawyer $250, and ate the three days I had to take off of work so that I could drive 6 hours there and 6 back each time I had to appear.

I was probably the happiest person in the world when NY finally went to photo driver licenses.