Woman’s phantom fines woes
FIVE cars, three provinces, one number plate... and just one owner.
Brenda Shepard, of Hillcrest, has since October been inundated with traffic fines and e-toll bills for five different cars. All the car number plates match those of her MercedesBenz B-Class.
Shepard’s husband, Steve, is convinced that his pensioner wife is at the mercy of an unrelenting scam.
Brenda received her first “traffic fine” on March 20 last year for a silver VW Golf in Margate. The tickets have not stopped coming. She was last fined R500 in Mogale City, Krugersdorp, on the West Rand, on February 11 for the activities of a dark blue/black Mercedes-Benz C-Class. The C-Class was also fined in Howick and in Pretoria in August and December, respectively.
The Shepards have also been receiving e-toll bills since March last year.
Strangely, one of the bills records a “large truck” using different number plates but bears Brenda’s particulars.
She has racked up R3 700 for 11 fines and R204 for e-toll bills.
Her pile of documents reveals that she had also been in different cities across KZN, Gauteng and the Free State. Other vehicles include a white Hyundai i10, fined twice, a Honda, once, a “large truck” and three “unidentified” vehicles.
Steve said they were baffled because his wife “never drives beyond Waterfall or Kloof”.
He said he had contacted the authorities where the cars had been fined but was frustrated by the lack of response, saying only the Johannesburg municipality had assisted.
“They gave her a letter to keep in her car, with a copy at home. If she gets stopped by police at any time for the tickets; she’s got a letter saying it’s a scam.”
Steve said his wife had never driven the car to Johannesburg or any of the other places because “she wouldn’t drive that far”.
He suspected that the car’s number plates had been cloned.
“We are now looking for somebody in KZN, where we can go and present all these documents for them to be withdrawn, but I haven’t found anybody,” he said.