Mostly people get caught by uptight do-gooders writing to the DMV and informing them of the dirty license plate. The Smoking Gun has a few collections of such letters to various DMVs.
Just yesterday, I saw a car with a California plate that said “4KAJ000”. Took me a while to parse it out.
Fork a Jew?
Uuuuhhhh . . .
Is this an offer, a recommendation, or an order? I couldn’t even decide if it was pro- or anti-semetic.
A few months ago, I saw one that read VASH TS. Nerdy enough for you?
Who the fuck tattles on vanity plates? Talk about buzzkills.
And now, the obligatory “Only in Utah” post.
The DMV here received a complaint about a plate seen in Salt Lake City reading MERLOT.
The owner was ordered to turn the plate back in to the DMV, as it was promoting alcohol, which we all know is bad for Utah residents.
Also rejected by the Utah DMV were GLADI8R, BYUH8R, and BANDIDO, however, the English version, BANDIT was approved. Interesting that 1PIRATE was turned down, but PIRATE was approved. It took an administrative law judge to tell the DMV that GAYSROK was acceptable.
It might just have been the next in the sequence after 4KAI999.
California standard plates are of the form #LLL### so that can’t have been a vanity plate.
I’m the only one who had no idea what it meant?
I sent the link to a friend, who then gave me a wiki link.
“Various” DMVs? WTF is going on in Wisconsin? 
CA recently recalled a plate bearing a couple’s initials- his are RAP and hers are JAP. Yep- somebody thought that RAPNJAP was offensive to Asian hip hop artists…
Could you see right up the tailpipe?
How are TP and BG phonetic for F and K? 
Not phonetic at all. Just stenographer’s ways of writing the letters.
I just linked to the Wisconsin one. There are other ones too.
Orange. Florida has an orange.
You parse too hard. California DMV rules don’t allow a number/letter, letter, letter/number, number, number vanity plate.
It interferes with their regular plate run and is therefore not allowed.
To those who may be unaware, Pennsylvania only issues one plate, which is put in the back of the vehicle. This makes the OP even funnier, as you can only read it from the rear.
Sorry, I stated that badly. The phonetic referred to the fact that words are written phonetically, so F-U-K instead of F-U-C-K; the letter combinations are just ways of writing letters that aren’t on the keyboard. Stenotype is just a way of using a machine to write shorthand, so it’s phonetic like handwritten shorthand.
Anyway, the plate translated to an obscenity, ignoring my badly phrased explanations.
I spent a few years living in Oklahoma years ago, and there was a minor mention once that someone’s vanity plate was revoked.
It read “OUI-OUI”
Evidently, someone thought this was a euphemism for urination and got offended.
People are idiots.
Ignoring the fact that, as others state, it’s just a standard plate, I didn’t get the Jew reference at all. I’d read it in an Italian accent, in which, of course, the “J” is pronounced like a “Y”. Now it’s offensive. 
Nope, I too was clueless. But Google is a wonderful educator.