Red light ticket fraud or mistake? Naples couple wants answers

Published: Updated:

NAPLES, Fla.- A couple wants to know if a red light ticket they received in the mail is fraud or just a mistake.

The couple says they didn’t run a red light and there is picture and video taken by the company who wrote the ticket that proves it.

In a traffic camera video, you can see the turn signal change yellow then red; that is when a silver car blows through the light. The ticket was sent to the McCauslands.

“It is scary because when I opened it up, I thought I was going to have to pay $158,” said April McCausland.

After taking a second look at the ticket, the couple realized they didn’t blow through a red light. They live in Naples, and the violation happened in Tampa in March.

“The first thing I thought, it’s a scam,” said April. “I realized it was Hillsbourgh County and we haven’t been out of Naples in six months.”

So, she called the Collier County Sheriff’s Office. The deputy plugged in the license plate written on the ticket and immediately knew the license plate wasn’t valid. That wasn’t the only mistake on the ticket.

“It says it’s a pickup on it,” said Bill McCausland of the ticket details. “The car in the camera shot is obviously a Sedan.”

The ticket had three errors on it. The printed license plate wasn’t valid, the printed tag number didn’t match the violators tag number and the car that blew through the stop sign wasn’t a truck as listed on the report.

“If this is real, how many times does this company make this mistake?” asked Bill. “How many people out there are getting violation notices when they didn’t do anything?”

The Collier County Sheriff’s Office is investigating to see if crooks are sending out these tickets. The company who sent the ticket says they are looking into the ticket and asked the couple to call back in five days.

The ticket came from violationinfo.com.

Copyright ©2024 Fort Myers Broadcasting. All rights reserved.

This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without prior written consent.