A license plate mix-up nearly landed a Dallas woman in jail after her brand-new Mercedes was stolen.
Christy Wiggins had recently purchased her dream car, a Mercedes AMG GT53, but one thing was needed to make her dream car complete. She wanted a custom vanity plate that read “Petronas,” in honor of the Mercedes Formula 1 racing team, Fox 4 reported.
Wiggins went online to MyPlates.com, an official state license plate marketing vendor, to order her vanity plates and tried several variations of the word before landing on “PTRONUS.” She paid $300 for the plates, which were approved by the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles (TxDMV) in April.
However, Wiggins’ Mercedes was stolen from her garage on May 10 after she had left her keys in the car and the garage door open. The Dallas Police Department (DPD) recovered the vehicle the next day.
As previously reported by The Dallas Express, auto thefts have been skyrocketing in Dallas over the last few years, with the most recent publicly-available data showing that stolen vehicle reports increased by 17% year over year during the first four months of 2023.
Police Chief Eddie Garcia has noted that DPD is suffering a severe staffing shortage, needing hundreds more officers to effectively police the city. Crime is especially high in hotspots like Downtown and Deep Ellum, the latter of which is now patrolled by a specialized unit dedicated to the neighborhood; however, there are no comparable units stationed in other similarly crime-ridden parts of the city.
“[My car] was taken to the city lot and I had it towed from there to [the] Mercedes [dealership] to wait for new keys to be ordered and delivered,” said Wiggins, according to Fox 4 News.
The car was parked on the street outside the dealership when a Dallas police officer took note of the vehicle and processed the plates. The plates on the Mercedes matched those of a Dodge Charger that had been reported stolen in 2021.
Wiggins told Fox 4 that an officer informed her that she would be prosecuted if she reclaimed her vehicle.
“He said, ‘Yes ma’am, if you were to drive your car away from Mercedes with this plate on it you would be pulled over and arrested at gunpoint. Your car would be seized, and you would likely be thrown in jail.’ I’m about to throw up at this point,” said Wiggins, according to Fox 4.
A statement from TxDMV confirmed that while the plates were indeed a match, Wiggins’ new plates had been issued after the stolen status for the Charger was lifted. TxDMV could not elaborate on why the police officer treated her vehicle as though it was the stolen Dodge Charger.
The officer assisted Wiggins in processing a special request to have her plates disassociated from the stolen Charger. She was subsequently given a refund and a new set of vanity plates, Fox 4 reported.
