Loophole in Traffic Infringements Nominations Being Abused

meong on 11/03/2024 - 10:34
Last edited 11/03/2024 - 18:14

REPOST as the previous post was overly suggestive of the actual fraudulent behaviour.

I figured this might be an interesting topic for a lot of people here.

There is apparently a massive loophole in the traffic infringements nomination process that will allow people to nominate a person that doesn't exist by using foreign IDs that Fines Victoria cannot validate and they will just have to accept the nomination.

Unless disputed by the person that was nominated, the person living in that address cannot dispute the fine, the fines will continue to be sent to that address.

How do I know this?

Well… a person from Department of Justice Victoria told me what actually happened to my address.

Continuation of https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/705930 (Mods, please don't merge to the old thread, because i think this is important for people to be aware)

After multiple RTS didn't seem to reduce the number of letters and seeing more and more variation of names, in April 2023 we decided to keep the letters.

In October 2023, we listed all the names on Excel and we found out there were about 200-300 unique names with about 3-4 times the amount of letters per person (1st warning, 2nd warning, Sheriff letters, etc). We knew that there must be some sort of organised behaviour.

We then tried calling Victoria Police Assistance line to report this issue. The response was, contact local police station.

We contacted local police station, they suggested to log via Crime Stopper. So we did.

After multiple inquiries to Vicroads and Fines Victoria throughout 2023 which were not taken seriously (simply taken as if these were just a case of someone forgetting to update their address), we decided to escalate to Victoria Ombudsman against Vicroads. We also had not heard any updates from our Crime Stopper report.

Vic Ombudsman said, Vicroads got no idea about these, none of the names have an active/valid registration and that the letters came from Fines Victoria.

Vic Ombudsman redirected me to Fines Victoria.

That is how we received the explanation above.

Basically, it has been flagged that there is a loophole on the "nomination" process of a traffic infringements that once nominated against someone, it will stay nominated against that person who may not even exist and there is no way for the nomination to be cancelled other than the person that was nominated. The process to cancel the nomination (which is to say, "it wasn't me") can only occur if I can provide the security questions (name, DOB, or other private details of the nominated person, etc).

It was also noted that the nominations seem to be for the names of people from "specific ethnic origins" which is assumed that the person behind this may have a lot of experience faking IDs from specific countries of origins.

Fines Victoria cannot do anything about this even though they are looking to try to stop those letters going to my address and they also said:

"The Road Policing Enforcement Division of Victoria Police are aware of your circumstances and are actively exploring both a short-term fix to stop the address <my address> from being used in nominations statements relating to overseas licence holders and, a long-term policy resolution to prevent this situation from reoccurring."

Last week, another person from Victoria Police reached out to me to follow up on the Crime Stoppers case (finally?) and after looking at additional evidences (Crime Stoppers website does not allow uploading of documents) and this was their response:

"I am afraid it’s a nuisance and there is no practical way Vic Police can stop people nominating your address."

==============

You guys probably wonder why I went through the troubles of raising complaints such as the above. Well its for these reasons:

  • It's annoying to deal with 20-40 letters coming in at once in your mailbox. We actually had to go through all of the letters to find the ones that are meant for us. Regardless how actively we try to tell companies to stop sending us letters (go paperless), there are still companies that continue to use physical letters such as a recent recall notice of a component in my car, a recent letter from a hospital for our invitation to a procedure that we were on waitlist for, etc. With junk mails, you can put a sticker on your mailbox and say "No Junk Mail", but these aren't junk mails.
  • There are repeat offenders out there (based on the car rego number) who continuously will try to speed, break through red lights, park wherever they please (some were infringements of disabled parking) and in areas about 1 or 2 suburbs next to us. These people are actually endangering other road users and think they can continue to do that and who knows eventually might be causing fatal accident to people that you know. These are not the basic going 60 in a 50 zone, some of these were 110-140 in an 80 zone. And don't forget the red light infringements as well.

To date, there are maybe about 400-500 unique names (as we stopped counting but can estimate based on the new names we observed).

=============

I don't think there are any further questions to be answered nor any actions I can take here but happy to hear your suggestions.

Automotive

Comments

  • askbargain on 11/03/2024 - 10:37
    +15

    straight to a current affairs

  • oscargamer on 11/03/2024 - 10:44

    Counting the seconds until this thread gets deleted

      • meong on 11/03/2024 - 10:48
        +5

        The post is not about me cheating my way out of the above.

        It's about people have been cheating their way by using my home address.

  • Ryanek on 11/03/2024 - 10:49
    +4

    So fraud?

    • meong on 11/03/2024 - 10:50
      +1

      Yes.

      But the loophole prevents anyone from doing anything about it unless there is a policy change.

      • Ryanek on 11/03/2024 - 10:53
        +7

        Yes very odd. There should be an expiry on the nominated driver so that it goes back to the original car owner after x days.

        • meong on 11/03/2024 - 10:57
          +1

          You'd think so. But no, we are still seeing the name of people that we saw in 2022.

          The other known policy is that if the Vicroads license is valid, they will cancel/suspend their license if the fines are unpaid.

          In these cases, there are no license to begin with (overseas ID).

  • Brian McGee on 11/03/2024 - 10:50
    -2

    there are still companies that continue to use physical letters such as a recent recall notice of a component in my car

    So you'd rather ignore an email that lands in your spam folder than get a physical letter for a safety related fault in your car?
    Go paperless, go lifeless.

    • meong on 11/03/2024 - 10:51

      We never got an email from Subaru for safety recalls even though they always send us an email for reminder of service.

      My point here is, I can't just grab whatever in my mailbox and throw them away without going through each of the letters to see if there are any addressed to me or my partner cause there are legitimate letters for us regardless how much we tried to go paperless (we're very good with emails).

      • Brian McGee on 11/03/2024 - 11:00
        -2

        Service reminders come from the dealer, recall notices come from the manufacturer. If you don't update the manufacturer with your address (there's some cards in your owners manual to do this), then they will be sent to your old address. If they get 3 RTS from your old address they can approach the registration authority to get your current address.
        Although one would hope when you drop your car for service at the dealer they would check for recalls.

        And don't confuse recalls with service campaigns.

        • meong on 11/03/2024 - 11:03
          -1

          There is no address issue with my dealer. I'm not sure what you're implying. I think you're focusing on the wrong thing. As I said above, my comment about dealer letters are the fact that I still need to receive physical letters in my mailbox and its annoying when there are about 20-40 letters in one day.

          I still receive the letters from my dealer just fine. When i moved to this property, I paid for 1 year of Auspost redirection.

          • Brian McGee on 11/03/2024 - 11:18

            @meong: Dealer and Manufacturer are different entities.
            Subaru Australia is the importer/manufacturer (Inchcape).
            Subaru North Shore (Artarmon NSW) is part of the Trivett dealer network.

            When i moved to this property, I paid for 1 year of Auspost redirection.

            Then lets hope the engineers at Subaru (inchcape) can find all the safety related issues over 3-5 years of operation and make sure they send the letter out in that year. Or you could justt send them the card in the owners manual and get it updated.

            • meong on 11/03/2024 - 11:19

              @Brian McGee: I think you've been misreading my comments.

              There is no address issue with Subaru.

              They have my correct physical address and email address.

              But they prefer physical for some form of communications.

              • Brian McGee on 11/03/2024 - 11:22

                @meong: And that is part of the recall system, that way they have records incase you ignore them and have an accident they have proof of attempted contact (sent 3 letters over 6 months, all RTS or no dealership claim, etc).

                • meong on 11/03/2024 - 11:24
                  +1

                  @Brian McGee: Yes, understood, im not against it. I have known instances car manufacturers to use registered letter (signed on delivery) to ensure that the recipient is aware of the defect.

                  • Brian McGee on 11/03/2024 - 11:39

                    @meong: All good, I probably misunderstood you weren't getting letters and being surprised by the dealer saying they performed a recall.

  • JIMB0 on 11/03/2024 - 10:50
    +1

    You have the rego number and they are in your area. Surely you can track them down and take action.

    Have you complained to Australia Post? They are required to stop letters that are not in your name from reaching your letter box if you request it.

    • meong on 11/03/2024 - 10:53

      Fines Victoria have the rego number which for example belong to person A.

      But person A nominated person B. The process is for Fines Victoria to pursue from person B unless person B themselves decided to reject the nomination.

      I am not person B so I cannot reject the nomination. I just happened to live in the address that person A allegedly claim that person B lives.

      But interesting point about Auspost? I didn't know I can do that? I'll ask them tomorrow.

      • Euphemistic on 11/03/2024 - 11:36
        +1

        Time to commit some of your own fraud and respond to the letters rejecting the nomination.

        • meong on 11/03/2024 - 11:36

          I would, but I would need to know the nominated person's DOB and whatever other checks they need to identify myself as the nominated person.

      • JIMB0 on 11/03/2024 - 12:32

        How many different cars are there? If the same car is behaving in such a way that they are getting dozen of fines they'd eventually be pulled over by police multiple times where they can't nominate another driver. They'd end up losing their license.

        • meong on 11/03/2024 - 12:34

          There are different cars but unsure how many. Never did count the cars as that would require us to open each letters whereas names were already shown on the outside.

          We might try checking this for the incoming letters.

  • OZBMate8911 on 11/03/2024 - 10:54
    +2

    Do you live at 123 Fake Street?

    • meong on 11/03/2024 - 10:55

      My address is not fake, but the person behind this has been happily nominating 400-500 people against my address.

      • OZBMate8911 on 11/03/2024 - 10:57
        +1

        Do you think it's the one person doing it? That's a hell of a lot of nominations for one person alone to have to rack up.

        Jokes aside, at first glance it seemed to me that you might just have a very easily thought of address that people were putting down.

        • meong on 11/03/2024 - 10:58
          +2

          Vic Ombudsman and Fines Victoria agreed that this is something "nefarious" (quoting Vic Ombudsman) and that this is potentially the work of a syndicate/organised crime.

  • pegaxs on 11/03/2024 - 10:57

    Well, from step 3 onwards, this is fraud and will land you in WAAAAY more shit than a parking ticket…

    • meong on 11/03/2024 - 10:57
      +1

      If you read the responses above from Fines Victoria, there isnt anything they can do really… Its stupid.

      • pegaxs on 11/03/2024 - 11:18
        +1

        But what usually happens is that the fines will fall back to the owner of the vehicle, unless the owner of the vehicle is also fake and using your address (if that was the case, they would flag the rego and cancel it). If that was the case the car's rego would be flagged for ANPR and police would stop it on sight.

        There seems to be a massive chunk of something missing here. How are they not able to flag mail going to your address as fraudulent if there is the same car/cars involved. They should be chasing up the owner of the vehicle with a "please explain".

        Is it even the same vehicles involved? Or is it different every time? If it is the same vehicles each time, then easy enough for them to flag it in their system. If it is a different car every single time, then its still easy. Wait for the reply, after no reply in 4 weeks to the infringement, it goes back to the owner of the car, because ultimately, they are at fault and have failed to provide the correct details of the offender.

        • meong on 11/03/2024 - 11:22

          I questioned all of the above to them over the phone.

          Basically once nominated, it will sit on the nominated person's Vicroads Client ID.

          Client ID is also the same as the drivers license number if an overseas license holder gets a Vicroads licence eventually.

  • Muzeeb on 11/03/2024 - 11:14

    TL;DR

    • meong on 11/03/2024 - 11:16
      +3

      There is a known fraudulent way to get out speeding of fines that Fines Victoria cannot prevent until a policy change.

      • Muzeeb on 11/03/2024 - 11:19
        +3

        That makes sense. Cheers

      • Clear on 11/03/2024 - 11:20

        Have you considered a knee capping?

        • meong on 11/03/2024 - 11:20

          I would but i took an arrow to the knee instead

          • Clear on 11/03/2024 - 11:24

            @meong: Alternatively you can be an international student and just leave the country when your studies are done. That's where a lot of debt sits with councils.

    • Thrift on 11/03/2024 - 11:29

      Address occupants hate this one simple trick! Scofflaws can nominate fictitious persons at your address to evade fines resulting in an unstoppable onslaught of mail.

  • Dollar General on 11/03/2024 - 11:21
    +2

    This is why I changed my address to the address of Fines Victoria

  • ihfree on 11/03/2024 - 11:22
    +1

    You can get out of rego by riding a unregistered dirt bike. Police won't give chase due to risk of injury to the rider.

    As a bonus, you don't have a plate so no infringement notices.

    • Clear on 11/03/2024 - 11:24

      Unless it's a motorcycle cop.

    • meong on 11/03/2024 - 11:27

      So many dirt bike riders on the bike paths around my area 🥲

  • bhubb18 on 11/03/2024 - 11:23
    +6

    I imagine this is someone operating a scheme of 'Oh yeah nominate me, pay me $1000, and I'll cover your points', and they nominate into someone elses name

    Pretty crazy that such a big loophole exists though

    • meong on 11/03/2024 - 11:30
      +1

      I assumed the same.

      This person would have a photoshop template of the foreign IDs used to nominate random names.

      Some of the names are a variation of the same name so it could be John Smith, Tim Smith, Jane Smith, etc (real names not mentioned here)

  • Drakesy on 11/03/2024 - 11:25

    Geeze, how have they not caught onto this.

  • askbargain on 11/03/2024 - 11:29

    Change your house number

    • meong on 11/03/2024 - 11:30
      +3

      Need to tie balloons to my house and move it somewhere else

  • mskeggs on 11/03/2024 - 11:53
    +2

    Two issues here. One is the annoying mail. Sorry, but I don't know how to fix that.
    The other is the extremely serious fraud issue where drivers appear to be exploiting this loophole in an organised fashion.
    Given you have tried the standard process to deal with this, I would be writing to the Police Minister and Premier, and cc in the opposition police shadow minister and opposition leader.
    There is tens of thousands of dollars of fraud at work here, and potentially lives at risk from repeat offenders not being prosecuted - ignoring this is the kind of thing that brings down governments.

    And it they fix it, it will fix your first problem.

    • meong on 11/03/2024 - 11:58
      +1

      I didn't think of contacting the opposition. Good idea. Let me research into how to do this.

      Another process would be to make a complaint against Victoria Police, but they don't have an ombudsman, so I doubt they will pay attention to it.

    • meong on 11/03/2024 - 12:00

      Except that in his case the nominated driver's ID was easily verifiable

  • newjerseydamo on 11/03/2024 - 12:00

    anything that isnt your mail, just write "return to sender - not at this address" and pop in the mailbox.
    once they have to start processing all this returned mail, they will see a loss in efficiency and perhaps then they will want to do something.
    It will also stop any subsequent mail for a specific fine (i.e., 2nd/3rd notice, warrant, etc.) from coming to your address.

    • meong on 11/03/2024 - 12:03
      +2

      You had no idea, we used a thick permanent marker (address has plastic cover, cannot use a pen) to RTS all these letters and put a block on the address using the marker until our marker got dry at some point 🥲

      No effect. The same names keep coming and there are new names.

      • newjerseydamo on 11/03/2024 - 12:10
        +1

        I understand it's been tough and it's fighting an uphill battle, but there is also the Postal Ombudsman. I'd also be lodging a complaint with them.

  • Gareth on 11/03/2024 - 12:50

    With this number of fake nominations going to the one address, you'd think someone (VicRoads?) could collate, work out where drivers may be the 'driver A' multiple times, and - assuming there is photographic evidence which is vaguely clear - go back to those original drivers with some pressure to try to find who is doing this.

    If these are speeding fines with photos, I'm sure that at least some look like "driver A"s DL photo - start with them. IANAL, but fraud charges or similar should be used to get more attention (than a simple ticket).

    If someone really wanted they should be able to investigate and stop/affect this. (Using the same address on so many nominations is poor OPSEC on the part of whoever is doing this).

    • meong on 11/03/2024 - 13:10
      +1

      What you mentioned in bold is the missing thing here.

      Responses seem to be formulated in the typical govt organisation of "this is not our job, however there is another department that is responsible".

      When dealing with any other ombudsman (non govt bodies) they would usually seek through the matter until its resolved (AFCA, EWOV, TIO) but with govt ombudsman, there is a "we might refer you to another body" in their t&c and the case with Vic Ombudsman is now closed.

  • El cheepo on 11/03/2024 - 13:59

    These are not the basic going 60 in a 50 zone, some of these were 110-140 in an 80 zone.

    Is this an exaggeration?
    Surely for someone doing 140 in an 80 zone you would be having a knock at your door after the police went to the registered car owners door and they pointed the finger to your address.

    • meong on 11/03/2024 - 14:13

      You may be right…

      My maths is incorrect.

      Most are offences for exceeding speed by 10-15km/h.

      There are a lot of traffic light offences though and they are still dangerous.

      Also there are many of the lesser ones such as "portable devices" etc.

      I need to sort through the notice which are still showing the speed. The ones that i just checked are more like a summary of demerit points loss hence doesn't show the exact speed anymore.

      However, me living pretty close to Broadmeadows, its not unusual to see hoons…

  • Gdsamp on 12/03/2024 - 15:13

    Good on the Victorian Ombudsman.

    Meanhwhile the WA Ombudsman is enjoying tax-payer funded business-class trips all around the world and funneling money to the OECD via IOI … https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02-16/ccc-inquiry-wa-ombuds…

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