Woman Arrested For Cardboard License Plate — And It’s Laughably Bad [Video]
Some friendly advice: If you’re going to try and pass off a cardboard license plate as authentic, the very least you can do is make sure it’s not a laughably bad failure.
Someone should have passed this tip on to 28-year-old Amanda Schweickert. Incredibly, the cardboard license plate wasn’t what caused the New York woman to be pulled over. That may be hard to believe, but the New York Daily News reports that an officer noticed she was lacking a front license plate. Could it be Schweickert ran out of cardboard?
Woman arrested after driving car with cardboard license plate https://t.co/FVGbn52OQ4
— TIME (@TIME) March 4, 2016
When the police officer moved to pull the woman over, that’s when he made the hard-to-miss discovery that she was driving around with a rather cartoonish-looking back license plate. Why would she go through the trouble? It turns out the New York native was riding around with a suspended license and no insurance.
She was arrested by the Erie County Sheriff’s Office, who also took her cardboard license plate. Images of the laughably bad plate were taken and then posted on the department’s official Facebook page.
The image post, writes the New York Daily News, was uploaded with the “snarky” caption, “In case you are wondering, homemade cardboard license plates are NOT legal.”
Commenters responding to the bizarre arrest and license plate story were largely amused — both at Amanda’s audacity and the decisive lack of effort that went into making the plate convincing.
One Facebook commenter wrote, “I don’t know what’s scarier…she thought this would work…or…she is driving a car!”
Another person went into detail about just what was wrong with the cardboard license plate.
“The worst part is that the plate is royal blue but the official one is navy blue…and the words New York are way smaller than they shoulda been…”
Another observer was curious if a previous license plate was used as a reference, asking, “Did the plate number match the one assigned to her car?”
Other Facebook members responded that even if it were true, the nature of the plate would have still made it illegal to drive around with.
As such, Amanda Schweickert was arrested, and CBS New York reports she faces multiple charges for her antics, including “possessing a forged instrument and operating a vehicle with a suspended registration.” Schweikert is being held on $400 bail.
One particularly startling fact learned while writing up this story is that this type of crime has happened before — multiple times. For instance, the Inquisitr previously reported that Massachusetts police arrested a woman for riding around with a fake license plate.
“A Massachusetts trooper saw a cardboard license plate on the back of a vehicle as it traveled down the highway and had no choice but to signal the driver to pull to the side of the road. The driver turned out to be a 20-year-old woman with a suspended driver’s license and an apparent penchant for homemade cardboard license plates.”
A close look at the cardboard plate and you can see that this woman’s efforts weren’t that much better. It’s actually astounding how individuals believe that hand-drawn plates will never draw suspicion. Also, it’s important to note that modern license plates contain information that police officers expect to be able to run through the computers in their vehicles.
Even if a cardboard license plate managed to avoid out-and-out suspicion, should a police officer run the plates through his computer, a few red flags will emerge. With this in mind, we can only hope the viral nature of this story will inspire crafty citizens to save themselves the embarrassment.
Why do you think this woman felt confident enough to drive around with a cardboard license plate that was so badly made? Share your thoughts below!
[Image via Erie County Sheriff’s Department]
