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.
straight to a current affairs