Pottawattamie County Treasurer Lea Voss says she has seen New York City tickets sent to local residents over the years when a plate was reportedly surrendered or the vehicle in a camera image did not match the vehicle registered to it. Jason Spicoli’s case stands out for its scale: he says he has never visited New York City, but since July he has received 30 tickets accusing him of running red lights and driving roughly 70 mph in a 30 mph school zone.
Spicoli told KETV that the notices began arriving not long after he sold his Jeep to a local Council Bluffs dealership. He says he no longer owns the vehicle and has never made the trip to New York. After receiving repeated tickets, he brought the notices to Voss in hopes of understanding why they were being sent to him.
A Recurring Headache for the County Treasurer
Voss told KETV that Spicoli’s 30 notices are more than she has seen in any other local case; other residents have received smaller numbers, she said. The recurring reports have left her with a growing stack of copies of New York City violations.
Voss said the cases she has encountered appear to involve either plates that had already been turned in or a vehicle in a violation image that does not match the one registered to that plate in Pottawattamie County. She said most of the citations are generated by cameras, rather than issued after an officer stops a driver.
Old Plates, New Problems
Similar cases have surfaced in Iowa over the past several years. In 2022, WOWT reported that Kathy Baker received a New York City speed-camera notice tied to an old Iowa plate. New York City DOT later dismissed the notice after finding the plate was attached to the wrong make and model of vehicle. The report also said Voss believed some Pottawattamie County plates appearing on New York cameras dated from 2010 through 2012; some plates from that period had reportedly been donated to an out-of-state charity to be scrapped or sold to help pay for child car seats.
Other Iowans have described similar notices. An 85-year-old woman named Barbara Brown received four New York City traffic fines despite never driving there, according to Fox5 Vegas. In 2024, Vern and Debra Harness told WOWT that plates they had turned in 12 years earlier appeared on a white van in New York City, generating four speeding tickets worth $300 each. The Iowa Department of Transportation has said it could not determine whether Iowa plates appearing in New York were counterfeit or genuine plates issued years earlier, and planned to continue working with New York law enforcement.
Not Just an Iowa Problem
The pattern reaches beyond Pottawattamie County. A Washington man, Wain Hickam, told KHQ he had received more than $800 in New York City tickets since May tied to plates he no longer owns. KHQ also reported that a 2025 New York Oversight and Investigations Division field check of 3,500 vehicles found that 126 of the 768 vehicles carrying out-of-state plates—about 17 percent—had plates that either produced no registration hit or appeared mismatched. The New York City Council’s Oversight and Investigations Division cautioned that its report did not estimate the citywide total of fraudulent plates or untraceable vehicles, so the field check should not be treated as a citywide error rate. Even heavy equipment has been cited: town officials in Lincoln, Vermont, disputed a $115 New York City parking ticket issued to the town’s 5-ton wheel-loader, which they said rarely leaves its garage, according to WCAX.
Collections Notices and a Letter That Went Nowhere
Voss told KETV that some residents have received collection notices. Years ago, when the issue first surfaced, she wrote to the governor of New York seeking help but said she received no response.
More recently, Voss said she connected with an employee in the New York City Finance Department who has been trying to help sort through the recurring errors. According to Voss, the employee told her that a ticket sent to collections would not affect a person’s credit or result in a warrant; that assurance has not been independently confirmed by the city in a public statement. KETV reported that it contacted the employee and the New York governor’s office for its story, but neither had responded by publication.
What Residents Are Being Told to Do
Voss said she has tried everything within her power to resolve the recurring errors and is urging anyone dealing with similar tickets to contact her office right away. She also recommends that residents turn in their Pottawattamie County license plates directly to her office rather than through other channels, in hopes of avoiding the kind of mix-up that has plagued Spicoli and others.
For his part, Spicoli is urging others caught up in the same mess to act quickly and complete whatever paperwork is required to dispute the charges. New York City's Department of Finance lists documentation that can support a dispute in cases involving a transferred vehicle or a surrendered plate, including DMV plate-transfer or surrender records, canceled or transferred insurance documents, or proof the vehicle was registered to someone else, according to the NYC Department of Finance. Separate guidance from the city's Office of the Parking Summons Advocate also notes that a police report, replacement plates or stickers, proof a vehicle wasn't in New York City on the date of the ticket, or an inaccurately recorded plate number can all factor into a successful dispute.
What the records can—and can’t—establish
The New York City Department of Finance guidance described above lists documents that can support a dispute when a vehicle was transferred or a plate surrendered, but the information summarized here does not specify a deadline for filing. Iowa Treasurers’ website guidance says plates placed in storage must be surrendered with the current registration at a County Treasurer’s Office so the state motor vehicle system can be updated. That guidance concerns storage, not plate handling after a sale, and does not establish what happened to plates reportedly donated years ago.
