Thread by @brooklynmarie

Yesterday I went to the DMV to get my license renewed in California. I've lived here for about 15 years. Before that, I lived in Georgia. The DMV told me that because my license had been suspended in Georgia because of unpaid tickets there, I could not renew my license. However,

I never had my license suspended in GA. I worked for CNN at the time, which was supposed to where I ended up for the rest of my career (I thought at the time), and was exceptionally paranoid about becoming a news story for some idiotic reason, like getting arrested for unpaid

tickets, and so I took care of it at that time. Then I moved away the next year. I've moved several times since, so I have no record of this. I called the GA DMV to clear it up, who said that these were not unpaid tickets but two Failures to Appear on my record and referred me to

the Atlanta courts. After several contentious discussions (they want me to either appear in person or plead in absentia, neither of which I'm willing to do for an issue that I resolved more than a decade and a half ago), I started asking around. Eventually, I discovered that

there appears to be some sort of trend southeastern U.S. states (maybe elsewhere as well) in which old cases are "reassessed" and people get hit with years-old FTAs. I don't understand a lot of this from a legal perspective, so if I get anything wrong bear with me. It is by all

accounts extraordinarily lucrative, raising millions for counties in just a few years. People would rather pony up a relatively small amount ($200 or so) than go through the massive hassle of appearing in person or hiring a lawyer. But in my case, my records show that I owe $0

and in fact, a lawyer I called said that he had never seen anything like it: no suspensions, no bench warrants, nothing but two open cases. I told him that was because I had settled all of this years ago. I have the CA license (renewed twice with no issue since 2004!) to prove it

I've even rented cars in Fulton County in the years since. The last time I visited was a couple of years ago. No issues. I'm not inclined to travel to Atlanta just to suddenly be slapped with a fine for some infraction I took care of years ago. (It was two fix-it tickets, one for

driving without a license, which I did have but was from Alaska, where I had just moved to Atlanta from and which they did not recognize as an acceptable license, and one for expired tags, the replacements for which were in the mail. I fixed both of these things and moved on.)

I'm not sure what triggered this "reassessment" between 2014 and now. I'm not even sure if this is technically a scam. I also am not certain if this had anything to do with that massive cyberattack a few months back, although I wouldn't be surprised since so many records got

destroyed. But I do know that @GACourts offered me two options -- to appear in person or plead in absentia -- for something that was not my mistake to begin with, and I do not plan to take either of those options. At any rate, here's my PSA: make sure you keep up to date on your

records if you've lived a lot of places and check up on them. Because now I'm going to have to jump backwards through hoops to clean up somebody else's messes.

I'll update when I have more to say, but for right now that's all I've got. Well, I have a lot of other things to say

but none of them are particularly helpful or nice, so I'll just save my ire until I decide who to point it at. Oh yeah, and if anyone knows anything about this please let me know. I am not sure what exactly to look for yet, and I'm still gathering information. Thank you!