After a Rhode Island man lost his front license plate, he assumed it had rattled loose. He then decided the car looked better without it, and never reported it to anyone. Eventually, a toll bill from a state he does not live in let him know where the plate ended up.
Jay (@.jaydave) laid out the problem in a video that has since drawn more than 361,200 views, with a caption reading: “Lowkey screwed.”
“If one of your license plates ever gets stolen, make sure you report that [expletive] to the police,” he says. “Two years ago one of my license plates fell off my car, at least I thought it fell off.” His reaction at the time was to shrug. “I was like, oh whatever, front plate’s gone, it’s looking smoother with no plate anyway, so I’ll just rock with that.”
The Letter From A State He Doesn’t Live In
The bill came from EZ-Pass Massachusetts. “I don’t live in Massachusetts, I live in Rhode Island,” he says, so he checked his own movements first. “I found out I indeed did not go through that toll. I made sure I was at work during the time that it was committed.”
Getting a person on the phone was an exercise in itself. “Everything’s a [expletive] automation nowadays,” he says, so he ended up on a web chat. The agent told him his plate had been photographed on a Ford F-150.
“I have never owned an F-150, nor do I ever plan on it,” he says. “So I promise you that wasn’t me. What do I do now?”
The answer was that he needed to file a dispute over someone else running a toll. “Somebody out there has my license plate now, and that’s really bad. I never reported that [expletive], it was never reported missing. So now, if they commit a crime with that, yeah it’s not my car, but they have my license plate. It’s going to trace back to me.”
Gallery: 2026 Ford F-150 Lobo
What Was The Outcome Of His Toll Appeal?
Massachusetts regulation places the onus on the person to whom the plate belongs. Under state law, “the registered owner of record of the motor vehicle is prima facie responsible for the payment of the tolls, fees, fines and/or penalties” for an unpaid toll, and the way out described in the same provision runs through law enforcement: the owner must have “reported in a timely manner to a police agency” that the vehicle was stolen, and it must still have been stolen when the toll was charged.
Jay had no report to point at. “I even appealed the EZ-Pass bill, and they denied it cause it is my plate,” he told one commenter. In another reply, he was blunter about what he was told: “I called, they said the only way I can prove it’s not me is with a police report.”
This applies in his home state too. Rhode Island’s DMV requires drivers replacing a missing plate to produce a police report or complete an affidavit, surrender the remaining plate, and be issued new ones. Driving on one plate for two years was its own problem: state law requires two plates “attached thereto one in the front and the other in the rear.”
“You Gotta Call The Police Bro”
“Why wouldn’t you report this? Isn’t this common sense?” asked giorgio71111. Jay replied, “Didn’t know I had to.” Ginnzey was more direct: “You gotta call the police bro.” Official_alex_lea raised the possibility he had skipped past two years ago: “License plates don’t just ‘fall off’.”
The thread’s most-liked comment was a joke with a serious point. “I did 20 years in prison because somebody committed a crime with my license plate,” wrote motorcitysportsp, drawing close to 5,000 likes. Jay answered: “There’s no way stop.”
Plenty of people had real horror stories about what happened when they didn’t report a plate stolen. Slilpphik6febe.onion wrote that not reporting a missing plate meant “they ran up a good $900 in tolls and I almost got my license suspended.” Gorillagripginger, also in Rhode Island, reported someone using his plate getting speeding tickets in Providence. Addyhopeburns had the bleakest story. They said that after her car was stolen, “the DMV gave me the same tag back,” and toll bills now arrive from Florida.
Jay says he is now doing what he should have done in 2024. Asked whether he had called the police, he replied, “I’m on it now.”
Motor1 reached out to Jay by email for comment. We’ll be sure to update this if he responds.
