It was a USDOT plate complete with DOT’s logo but for private use. Hmmmm, that’s strange and sovcit bunk that the car is not for commerce, transport or hire. But it looked like a real plate, not one of those handwritten pieces of crap. Could it actually be that people are making sovereign citizen plates that at a glance would pass as official government license plates? Yep.
Here is the one I saw but white instead of a purple background.
Here is another example with different wording
My legal question is would they get in more trouble putting on a plate that is made to look like it is issued by the Federal government than simply having no plate at all?
If the license plate isn’t counterfeit (i.e., a reproduction of an actual plate), I would think that it would be the same as not having a plate. IANAL.
There certainly are Federal crimes and penalties for impersonating some forms of government official. LEO and military for sure, but after that I’d be guessing who.
Having your vehicle impersonate a government vehicle seems to me to be pretty unlikely to be prohibited in general. Especially at the Federal level. It’s not a problem Congress has likely taken notice of. Yet.
There are state laws against rigging your car up to resemble a police car. Some states have specific details in their vehicle code about the lights police vehicles and only police vehicles may display. Perhaps ditto for fire or EMS. Other just cover it under the general “no impersonating an officer or their equipment (including their cars)” type laws.
But these wackos aren’t trying to imitate real cops; they’re trying to gain immunity from real cops.
I worked with a guy that bought a “Sovereign Citiizen” license plate online. He also claimed he could go anywhere in the US and no one had the right to stop him. He found out the hard way when he was pulled over for having that plate on his vehicle instead of a state issued plate. He got pulled out through the window and spent 7 days in jail. Cost him over $1000 to get his car out of impound. A few years later he found out that the sovereign citizen stuff really doesn’t work with the IRS. He had been submitted tax forms to the IRS with name and zeros in all the boxes. He got a $10,000 fine, spent 6 weeks in jail (burned up all his vacation doing this) and had a big chunk of each paycheck garnished to pay what he owed in taxes.
That article is six years old. The best-case conclusion is that despite it’s being around that long so few idiots have tried this ridiculously noticeable violation that it hasn’t risen to the level of a national problem.
Great find there @racer72! So what USDOT said was:
These DOT plates aren’t real. If you bought one, you were defrauded by the seller. And you displaying it on your vehicle in lieu of a real plate is illegal in any state that requires real license plates. Which would be (we guess) all of them.
“On Patrol: Live” recently featured a Nevada SovCit being pulled over for similar plates. Plates were seized as fictitious, car impounded as unregistered & uninsured, “traveler” ticketed for having no current license and let go.
The typical argument is that registration laws only pertain to commercial transport, which is – of course – bullshit. This came up in the Nevada incident mentioned above.
I occasionally see a ('50s? Early-'60s?) pickup truck that does not have a license plate. Instead, it has a red license plate with white or yellow (I don’t remember which) letters that say FARM TRUCK. NB: This is not a state-issued licence plate that has registration numbers and ‘farm truck’ underneath them. The whole plate just says FARM TRUCK.
You’re not required to have your vehicle registered if it is only used on private property, but this guy uses public roads to get to the supermarket or whatever. (ISTR seeing him on the freeway at least once.) I’m wondering how he gets away with it.
I wonder how many of these knuckleheads who FAFO with SovCit crap awaken to the reality that they’ve been suckered by a batshit conspiracy theory, vs. how many double down and fight the system even harder.
I mean, obviously, if a cop pulls you over and a judge sentences you and a prison incarcerates you for these actions, they’re all just in on it. /s
My state only requires a license plate on the rear bumper. People often decorate their front bumper with a plate that has a pretty picture or a cute catchphrase on it. Could you do that with one of these, or would the DOT logo get you into trouble.?
As a former Nevadan I fervently hope “let go” meant the Highway Patrol left him standing by the roadside as they towed his car away.
Here, Mr. Traveler, take the citation you deny the validity of and travel by foot to the nearest town. Can’t be more than 50 miles up the road. It’s only 105F here in the shade that doesn’t exist. Sorry I can’t help you, we don’t have a contract together.
