My girlfriend recently received a phone follow-up to a traffic citation she got a few months ago (illegal u-turn). This is in California (San Diego). The guy on the phone asked her whether she was employed and where. When she asked why they needed that information and who required it (county/state), he told her nothing, and when she wouldn’t tell him, he said he would put “refused” on the form and it didn’t look good for her to have that. At this point she caved and gave him the info.
I am curious whether they had the right to do that (with all the usual “this is not legal advice” disclaimers), and what they use the information for? It doesn’t seem relevant to the ticket or any of the state/county/city’s business. Anybody know about this?
Is it common to receive a phone call after a traffic ticket in Cali? It’s not done here in Illinois and I’ve never heard of this done elsewhere.
My initial reaction is a bill collector, possbily relating to the trafifc ticket, using some social engineering to get her employer for garnishment/harassment purposes. Hope I’m wrong.
Never heard of it but neither of us has received a moving violation here before. I was in the car with her, and we both remember the cop saying she would receive something in the mail, which she never did. Today she got this call saying she needs to go to court to clear it up. The caller said it’s only a courtesy for them to send the letter.
I thought about this, but why would a bill collector be the one to inform her she needs to go to traffic court? I’d assume if the bill has already been sent to collection it’s too late for court.
Another WAG: the court has a place to serve a warrant if you skip on the ticket and move. I’ve never heard of anyone having wages garnished for a traffic ticket, but I have heard of police showing up at a place of work to serve a warrant.
There is a whole interconnected data base that has been under development under the umbrella of security. See US Census an American Community Survey. They were trying to fill in gaps in data.
Sounds like a scam to me. Don’t take phone calls from strangers who want personal information, even if they claim to be from the government. Especially if they claim to be from the government.
Years ago, I worked on programming for a Minnesota program called “Revenue Recapture” which involved seizing Income Tax Refunds from people who owed money to the State, mostly for unpaid Child Support, but some others for unpaid judgments, and unpaid fines (which could include traffic ticket fines).
Later, I heard that they were working on expanding this program into something like a State Collections Agency, which would go beyond just withholding tax refunds to actively garnishing wages, attaching bank accounts & seizing other assets of people who owed the State money. Unpaid traffic ticket fines could be included in this.
But at the time, this process was expected to be fairly costly, so they had a fairly high minimum amount ($1,500-$2,000) before accepting a case. You would have to have a lot of traffic tickets to reach that amount, I would think.