Without punishment laws become suggestions.

Dude was driving around for 5 years with paper tags.😂 Can’t say you’re driving that long without questioning that vehicle… he knew!

Just last night, in a church parking lot no less, I saw a "work truck" full of construction tools with a metallic Michigan Dealer Plate on it. It's highly unlikely that truck was in use for Dealer related activities.

We bought a new truck in 2022 and after the permanent tags came in, we got a TOLLTAG bill for the paper tag (which we still have in our possession) - which was photographed on a Nissan sedan. Had to fight with the toll company over bogus charges because they said the DMV identified the tag as ours even though the picture showed a Nissan and the fake paper tag says 2014 Nissan. The DMV had verified it was for a 2032 truck. Toll company didn't care. Nightmare. So glad they are finally fixing that problem.

So it seems the problem is that there is no punishment for someone being caught with these fake plates other than impounding the vehicle.

1:45 "The driver ends up with four tickets, and has to walk away." And now we know why this problem continues to happen.

I live in Colorado. Was stopped behind a car last week with 2017 tags. This is a huge problem here as well.

This is prevalent everywhere. In like 20 minutes on just about every interstate you'll see almost more paper tags than actual license plates. It's rampant in North Carolina.

Ghost cars may also be stolen vehicles. A neighbor had his truck stolen, it went to Mexico, came back to AZ with Mexico plates, the truck was in a parking lot we called the neighbor he arrived and confirmed it was his truck (personal stuff was in the back), he called the police, using the vin # and report# for stolen vehicle, he got his truck back.

The obvious solution is for Motor Vehicles Department to stop issuing paper plates. We would walk into DMV, fill out the forms, pay the fees, and were handed an envelope with a pair of new license plates and the validation tags to stick on them. My sister-in-law went to the dealer window at DMV with the paperwork for all sales in the last 24 hours or over a weekend and walked out with registration for each vehicle. They told customers that they had 48 hours to return the loaner plates (DMV clearly marked those plates as Dealer Temporary). You had to be able to forge license plates and registration tags, not just be able to print your "picture of a license plate".

The bureaucracy is so overwhelming that the system of tracking no longer functions.

In Australia the number plate stays with the car no matter how often it is sold.

in our state fake, altered or swapped plates are a FELONY, you go straight to jail.

These drivers know the tags are fake. Good to see they’re getting their exercise and staying healthy walking home! 😂😂😂

Here in GA they disincentivize going the legal route by charging new residents a sales tax on their vehicle even though they already paid sales tax when they bought the car in their other state. Can't say as I blame them for not registering here.

“They could do this all day long if it’s all they did” What a brilliant piece of journalism

I've never understood paper tags. Here in Alberta, you walk into the DMV with your proof of ownership, your drivers license and proof of insurance, and they issue you an actual metal license plate right on the spot. No waiting, no mailing, no paper tags. You just get your license plate within an hour of buying your new or used vehicle. And NOT at the car dealership. You have to go to the DMV to pick up your plate.

Crazy how easy this has been for years and they are just now catching on.

The solution is pretty simple. Where I live, you either go to a DMV location, acquire the plate for the vehicle you've purchased... and then take the plate to dealership where you can pick up your vehicle and drive away. Alternately, the dealership will obtain the plate on your behalf for a fee. There's absolutely no need to have dealerships print out temporary paper plates. This is a nonsense process.

Why were they let go instead of being charged for no registration or insurance? This is another reason law abiding people have to pay so much for their insurance.

Today I was driving behind enough vehicles that had paper plates that I began to think that this is not really happening. But it was. In recent weeks or months my observations of an un believable number on cars without any plates whatsoever. Last summer I was made aware of a store that someone had stolen several of their highest priced drones by simply walking in and grabbing them, and running out the a waiting car which had no plates on it so the security cameras had no useful information to use to catch the thieves. Masks because of covid were of course part of the crime. After learning about this is when I started watching all the cars without identifying markings They seem to be the type of car you might guess. Blacked out windows and some other distinguishing features that are conveniently able to be seen as a particular type of defense mechanism that get called out when the car might be pulled over by police. It’s not acceptable. The police have given me tickets ages ago because of expired tabs. But I don’t think any of the cars I have looked at being ticketed along the roads seem to be missing the plates. That’s BS.

The "people" who came up with the idea for these paper plates, knew EXACTLY what they were doing.

Why aren't they arresting them? 💙 T.E.N.

It seems to me that this would be an arrestable offense. Falisfying government property is usually a crime in most states.

This is going on in every state.

When more people are doing it, means they're not afraid of the consequences

Temp. plates are a result of poorly written laws by legislators who believe they are more knowledgeable than they actually are. Unintended consequences result from poorly thought out laws. Very common in Texas.

This is a HUGE problem in Missouri. There are countless cars out on the road with what they call "temp tags" and are given to people when they buy their vehicles. They use that plate until their actual plate comes. The problem comes when a person doesn't pay the sales tax on a vehicle which isn't always collected at the time the vehicle is sold. See how simple that would be to fix? It wouldn't change anything for private party sales but it would for dealership sales. Some of these temp tags are 2 and 3 years old yet they keep driving.

I have been seeing paper tags all over the place since COViD. I thought it was strange but makes sense people are using them to skip out on registration, insurance, and use stolen cars. I am sure there is a way to end this but all I can think is to get rid of the temp tags.

I think this problem has an easy fix; have the dealer issue the actual license plate. Since I bought my first new car in the 80's in Puerto Rico, the dealer put the official license plate immediately before I drove away. Today, they still do it that way. Another interesting fact is that in Puerto Rico, the license plate stays with the car forever until it goes to the junkyard to die. When you sell your used car, the registration has the license plate number which then changes to the new owner's name.

I am guessing many of those fake license plates are people trying to avoid paying state tax on their vehicles registration.

Thank you Texas we certainly have enough of the ghost cars up here in Missouri and there's no excuse for it anymore

I’m glad no one who had fake plates actually knew they were fake. They were upstanding citizens for sure

Here in Hawaii, people put out of state tags on their vehicles, knowing full well police won’t bother pulling them over because of the amount of paperwork involved!

Two cops in one car. That should be nationally standard.

Vehicles should carry ONE license number for life as done in the UK. No temp tags etc. The US has many accumulated absurd laws.

I live in Canada and when you buy a car here you go to the MOT (ministry of transportation) and show bill of sale, a sellers package, and you get the vehicle transferred into your name and get metal plates right then and there. No opportunity to even deal with a "temp" paper plate.

The way it’s always worked for me. If I buy a used car from a person, not a dealership, I would simply go to the DMV with a title and pick up tags or temp tags. If I sold a vehicle, I would take the tags off first. License plates are supposed to be a matter between you and your state DMV, not the buyer or seller.

*I have a ghost car. Every month after the car payment I get this ghastly feeling that leaves me shuddering. After the gas fill-up my wallet is a scary thing to see.*

95% of the paper plates I see around here are expired months and sometimes years.

As someone who has been hit by an uninsured driver, I commend these cops!!!

Oklahoma has this same problem. It is rampant. I cant go 10 miles down the road without seeing an expired temporary tag. It's super rare for me to see a temporary tag that is not expired.

This problem is even bigger in AZ. I must pass at least 50 such tagged vehicles every morning on the way to work (15 miles).

That was a good report. CBS Texas is certainly a cut above their competitors. Well done.

Here in NY we don't have paper plates. The car dealerships have sets of plates that they assign you when you buy a car and they register it for you. So much easier.

I live in MA and the DMV started issuing temp/paper plates during the pandemic due to the backlog. It is already a problem here. I purchased a car vehicle recently in NC which I brought back to MA. I was pulled over within the first week because they wanted to check if my temp plates were real. I showed them my paperwork and insurance and was on my way. I totally understood the reason and see it to be a problem. Glad theyre cracking down!

Do you think maybe there's a problem with paper license plates in the first place? Who would ever think that this would be a bad idea subject to criminal misuse!

Texas has one of the highest vehicle insurance rates in the nation! This is one reason why.

When I lived just outside of Austin in Pflugerville, I knew people that kept getting paper tags for cars and trucks parked on the private property of a mobile home park. Because these were on private property the police could do nothing about it and towing companies didn't want to get involved when the property manager asked for the vehicles to be removed as abandoned. This is such a big problem in many states.

In Portland, people don't use paper plates, metal plates or any type of plates. Just roll around in garbage dump, trashed out vehicles and the cops don't seem to care. It's truly incredible.

This is certainly not just Texas! This is in New York, Newark, New Jersey, for example California, Oregon everywhere! And they say ghost guns are a problem. There’s probably 5000 to one ratio.

You don't even need a computer, just a smartphone and a printer...

I live and work here in Dallas and I actually made a comment to my girlfriend a while ago noticing the influx of paper plates on cars, crazy to think most of those were probably ghost cars

And there is me getting pulled over 5 minutes after buying a car to get it home.

You should include in your investigation the reason why there's so many paper plates out there. The Texas DMV is a disaster dumpster fire. It takes almost 3 to 4 months to get an appointment. If they want this problem of paper plates to go away they need to fix the root of the problem and that is to either build more DMVs and have more availability to shorten the length of time it takes to get into the DMV.

Yet another fine example of how criminals do not and will not obey laws. Make as many laws as you like…the weight of them only fall upon we who obey them.

I've never understood these people or the blacked out plate people. It's like screaming "please pull me over". I suspect these people are simply stupid. As they pointed out the guy that fled had warrants. This will be the default assumption of any officer.

Here in California, especially in the city where I live, you can see as many cars with fake paper plates or nothing at all, running red lights or making illegal turns.

Not a good idea to scan a qr code with your personal phone when you don't know what it does or where it goes...

They should do away with those temporary paper plates in the states that issue them and nationwide. Here in New York where we DO NOT issue them, they are also a nuisance. I see so many vehicles with them from other states including New Jersey breaking all kinds of traffic laws. Speeding and red light cameras don't stop them because the plates are fake.

I drove around on BS tags with no license for years. Looking at the consequences of it I def saved a lot of money compared to inspections, insurance, etc, but I am very glad to have finally gotten my life together. It's a good feeling to not have to worry about jumping out of a moving vehicle every time an Officer gets behind me. All legit from here on out, the stress just isn't worth it, if I had gotten into an accident I would have been in big trouble.

That caprice in service is fire tho

How prevalent is this? I bought my wife a slightly used car from a popular DFW car dealer. We live about 75 miles from DFW. Everything was normal about the transaction, about 3 weeks after the purchase we received the plates in the mail and I installed them on her car. I threw the temporary tags in the trash and about a month later we received a bill from the Texas Toll System out of DFW. In a rural area someone had stolen that temporary tag out of our trash and stuck it on another car and ran up a pretty substantial toll bill. We called the toll authority and once they realized the photo their cameras had captured was obviously not the car the temp tag was registered to, they cancelled what we would have owed them.

this is a huge problem in Cleveland, too. It started here when Covid began. They refuse to pull them over here.

My wife and I have typically bought used vehicles from people we know. Vehicle comes with license plates. While that is the majority of our vehicle purchases, we have bought from the used lot of a new car dealership, used car dealers, an auction, and even Facebook Marketplace. We've personally never had more than one temporary, paper tag on any vehicle we've bought. We've always gotten proper metal license plates and paperwork before the temporary tags expire, where applicable. However, we know people who've bought vehicles at "buy here, pay here" lots and some have been given a string of temporary paper tags, one after the other, until the car is paid off. The used car lot, in some instances, refuses to provide proper registration & title until every last dollar of the installment payment is made. The correct thing to do is to issue the title to the buyer and put a lein on the car until it is paid in full. But issuing a string of temporary tags is how they prefer to do it. I've also seen ads on OfferUp for temporary tags. Nowadays the ads are often titled something else entirely, but in the picture and buried in the description, you can see they're really selling temporary tags. I've sent one or two such listings to a friend who works in law enforcement. I think the mills turning out the temporary tags and the used car lots refusing to issue proper documents until the automobile is fully paid should be the subject of scrutiny by law enforcement. The drivers should be dealt with on a case-by-case basis - some are clearly complicit, and others, victims of unscrupulous used car dealers. My 2 cents.

DPS needs to worry less about no front plates and more about fake plates. :-(

If you are ever in an accident, make you you take a photo of the VIN of the other car. It is usually visible through the windshield on the dashboard on the drivers side. It may be obscured (intentionally?) by papers and stuff on the dashboard. You can ASK the person the clear the view of the VIN, but stay safe if you get bad vibes.

I used to know a guy that rented a little corner lot, got a dealer license and would buy cheap cars and lease them out to people in the neighborhood and would get legal dealer paper tags for them! when they expired every 90 days, he would just get updated ones provided they made their monthly payments! He was the ghetto Robinhood of my soutside neighborhood😂

I personally experienced an encounter here in Colorado. A migrant driving a car with a fake Texas paper plate collided with me. He supposedly didn’t speak English and had no drivers license nor insurance. He was cited for reckless driving and having no license. As far as I know he didn’t appear in court.

Why are they letting the drivers walk away? They should be in jail for at least a few weeks...

Thank you this is a real problem

A couple of things could help this. First; separate the Registration from the Inspection Sticker. There is no reason for them to be linked. Second; separate the Insurance requirement, from the registration. Leave the Insurance requirement connected to the Inspection Sticker.

This is actually a profitable venture for the police. Most of these cars will never be bailed out of impound and become state property to be auctioned off.

I pay the dealership hundreds of dollars in “fees” and they give me a paper plate, then 3-6 weeks or more later the state mails me permanent plates. If dealerships are agents of the state, collecting fees and entering ownership information into a database, why can’t dealers issue a permanent plate at the time of sale? A minimum wage employee at Wal-mart can issue a fishing license but a car dealership can’t issue a license plate.

This is a problem created by Texas itself. If the plate always remains to the car, and the government registers car + VIN+ license plate and only hands out documents that state the ownership- only if insurance and taxes are paid - than nobody needs paper license plates. Dealers and garages can have 'company dedicated insured plates' for non registered vehicles or for a test drive after maintenance. Making fake metal plates is a lot harder to do. if so many cars drive around with paper plates, you can also ask yourself, why the fines are not higher. Fake plate and no taxes = theft and falsifying documents - 2000 dollar fine and car confiscated. Not insured = irresponsible driving = driving license revoked, for 1 year.

I really dislike the wording of the statement about "Your insurance will take the hit" .... Literally had a woman ruin my life by pulling through 5 lines of traffic with her lights off. Yeah im blessed to be alive but she did not give a flying fuck. She went all in - my insurance is still fucking me 2 years later.

“The truck would follow us around if this is all we did” perfect, I support this. It’s much better than being a speed trap

A fake plate since 2018!? These criminals save so much money not having insurance for 6 years while they have the paper plate, it costs them next to nothing to get the car out of impound.

Living in Houston. I'm amazed everyday when I see those paper plates that are long expired. Some so old you can't even see the writing on them. Like the one cop said, they could ride around doing that all day long. That's truth!

Add arrest, jail time, and a very steep fines to who ever used the illegal tag or plates, as long as the punishment of the crime is weak, people will always abuse the system.

The answer is to just not give out paper tags. The NYS DMV simply doesn't. If you register a car, you're getting metal plates that day. They take them directly from secure storage and hand them to you once you settle up.

Oh my goodness , - all of a sudden , - we're goin' to hell in a hand basket !

When u see an old ass car w 30 day tags 🤣 Bar code shall be open to tow trucks they will be looking for those plates like gold.

My dumb ass bought one of these for my first car thinking it was legit. Thank God the police officer that pulled me over was aware that people were getting scammed and told me I was better off riding with no license plate rather then this bull shit.

Not just Texas, N.C. is full of fake tag, none insured cars also. A lot of hit and runs involve this type.

Great job GP PD! I drive a lot, & see a MINIMUM of 10 ‘paper plates’ a day. I’ve lived in Houston 5 years now, & I’ve seen ONE car pulled over by police. They seem to do NOTHING about vehicular crime here.!

I work as Armed Security in a private neighborhood and when we have mail theft or porch pirates, they ALWAYS have paper plates. I think that if you are caught with a fake paper plate, you should get a $100 fine and a week in jail.

Paper number plates, what a stupid system. Here in the UK the plate stays on the car when it changes owner, the new owner can be registered online instantly enabling them to drive away after buying insurance.

In Harris county, law enforcement doesn't care about illegal temporary plates. Almost 1/3 of the cars on the roads in Harris County have temporary tags. Old cars cars junker cars you know that are not registered. I've seen neighbors drive the same car for 3 years with temporary tags on them. These cars stay on the road and law enforcement does nothing about it.

Solution to this in PA is, you must have a physical metal plate in addition to the printed temporary registration tag. It’s law that all cars unless purchased out of state have a metal tag.

My dad was a cop. Fake paper tags were a pet peeve of his. Every time he saw some old hooptie rolling around with a faded paper tag he’d pull them over right away. Always had an expired tag underneath. He said if you really want to fix them impound the car. Only the registered owner can pick it up and these drivers never bothered to register it in their own name, it belongs to the guy they bought it from.

Our shop truck was just totalled by 2 kids from India driving one of these cars.No insurance. No license.No registration.

It seems like there is no punishment for the fraudulent insurance companies jacking up the rates even though there are hardly any people even insuring vehicles anymore.

Besides insurance the rest of it really doesn't boil down to our safety. It boils down to your money.

This is a huge problem in Virginia.

It seems like 80% of cars in Texas have paper plates.

I see everyday paper plates in florida!! You can teĺl they've had the car for years but just prints out new paper tags so they don't pay tax or insurance!! We end up paying for it!

A little story: I used to live in St. Louis, a place where people were driving wrecked cars barely safe to be in. Most of those vehicles were stolen, and most police just didn’t care. But here in Dallas, the same situation prevails everywhere. But I will say, these officers out here are ruling with an iron fist.

20+ years ago in Michigan when you purchased a car/truck, the dealer either gave you a 30 temp plate if you were going to re-register your old plate (personal plate) or handled you the standard Michigan license plate and attached it to your vehicle. They were connected with SoS and also handed you your registration papers. If you were stopped leaving the dealer, you had all your documents on you. Last year in Michigan, I saw a Ford F-250 with expired Texas paper plate. Texas was being sued by New Jersey and another state over this BS

The Supreme Court has ruled several times that we don't have to have State plates or State driver's licenses to travel on our roadways.