San Diegans fined for other people's traffic violations. NBC 7 Responds helps clear their records

It can be disheartening having to pay a traffic ticket. Now imagine having to pay someone else’s ticket.

It's doubly disheartening if it requires a lot of work for you to clear it up, too. NBC 7 Responds helped a man from Santee and a man from Imperial Beach clean up their driving records.

Here's how you can clean up any mistakes you may find in yours. 

Sometimes a language or technology barrier could get in the way and other times, the amount of legwork required to clear an erroneous ticket could be daunting. 

Angel Rodriguez works in the service department at a Chula Vista car dealership. It's a job he’s only had for a couple of months and that he desperately needed, he says. But he almost didn’t get it because of a mistake on his driving record. 

He said that the hiring manager told him his application was on hold because of a speeding ticket. 

He looked it up and found out it was out of Kern County. It had his first and last name, and date of birth. The only difference was the middle initial and an address out of Texas. He says he made several calls to the Department of Motor Vehicles and to superior court up in Bakersfield to explain they linked it to the wrong person. He explains he felt overwhelmed by the legwork needed to clear it up, including possibly making a four-hour trip out there.

“I saw the papers of the language I have to talk about and all this stuff and I thought I can't do this,” Rodriguez said.

His mom reached out to NBC 7 Responds and we quickly contacted the superior court in Kern County. 

The managing attorney Carla Ortega explained they accurately reported the information to the DMV where she suspects the mistake was made.

The DMV didn’t provide a statement to confirm that. Ortega had her staff reach out to the DMV on Rodriguez’s behalf and a few weeks later, the ticket was no longer on his driving record. 

Now in Santee, Eberto Cardenas says he somehow racked up six toll violations up in the Bay Area that are not his, but paid for anyway. 

One after another, a total of six toll violations hit Cardenas’ mailbox. He says he tried to convince the Metropolitan Transportation Commission that they’re not his.

He was able to convince us though. 

First off, he says the car pictured in the violations is clearly not his. In fact, he says the last time he was up in the Bay Area was in the 90s and in a bus. 

The plates on the tickets are the same. So how to explain that? Cardenas says he couldn’t get answers when he called the number on the ticket. 

NBC 7 Responds found out from MTC that their system mistakenly read the “I” on the violator’s license plate as a “T”  due to a frame that blocked the camera from reading the license plate correctly, putting him on the hook for the tickets. 

The tickets were dismissed and Cardenas got the $80 back he had to pay to renew his vehicle registration. 

In this last case, MTC said they’ve flagged his plates to make sure it doesn’t happen again. The DMV gives you access to your driving record and a way to correct any mistakes you find by filling out a form DL 207 form.