BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB) – When Erin Deming walked into the Dunkirk Department of Motor Vehicles in October 2023 to surrender the license plates from her old Chevy Camaro, she believed it was going to be an easy transaction. She had sold the car in a private sale, turned in the plates, cancelled her insurance, and moved on.
Instead, she unknowingly stepped into a bureaucratic nightmare that would consume more than two years of her life, drain her emotionally, and expose a statewide vulnerability in how surrendered license plates or their plate numbers are handled across New York.
Within weeks, Deming, a Portland resident who has never set foot in New York City began receiving toll bills and parking violations from the city. Then more. And more. At one point, she says, they were arriving “one or two a week.”…