A woman says her life has been put on hold after she was fined £1,000 and summoned to court for motoring offences she did not commit.
Sarmite Reinholde had given her Audi A5 back to a finance company in October 2018 having used it for a year.
Authorities still believed the 33-year-old was the driver of the vehicle years later, and were sending fines to her old address in Barry which she'd been oblivious to.
Four years after giving the car back to the finance company the mother-of-one has clocked up more than a £1,000 in fines which should never have been directed to her, Wales Online reports.
She has even had to defend herself in court and has been unable to remove a county court judgement on her name and six points from her licence.
Things got so bad for Ms Reinholde that she was even told she could lose her job in insurance over the allegations.
“The first I heard of it was in July last year when I received a message from Preston Magistrates Court telling me I had the fine and six points on my licence and that my case had already been heard in court,” she said.
“As the case was in Lancashire to be honest I thought it was a mistake.
"There was no explanation or context to it, but I was told if I didn’t pay the bailiffs would be at my door. It was not a nicely worded letter at all and was very threatening.
“I’d had the car for work from October 2017 to October 2018 and then circumstances meant I had to give it back to the company, which I did.”
Ms Reinholde, from Church Village in Rhondda Cynon Taf, found herself in court on July 9 this year after a long battle to get the case looked at again.
The DVLA has extended its sympathies to Ms Reinholde, but has said it is not to blame for the situation.
The agency said drivers of vehicles on finance should notify the DVLA themselves when they are no longer the keeper of the vehicle, rather than assuming the company will do so.
Ms Reinholde denies she is at fault for failing to carry out proper administrative work after transferring the car back to the company, and says she did notify the DVLA appropriately and the whole debacle has been unfair and damaging to her life.
Letters from the DVLA show that Ms Reinholde did ensure the DVLA was notified she was no longer the driver of the vehicle in October 2020 - two years after she’d last driven the car.
An email from a representative of the DVLA suggests she had done enough at that point to be immune to any offences which occurred from October 2018.
The email reads: “You were originally removed from our record as the current keeper when a new keeper updated via a V5C logbook on October 19, 2019.
"So this was recorded as your disposal date.
"You are now shown on our system as not having the vehicle from November 22, 2018, and any fines that happened after that date you are not liable for.”
Ms Reinholde says this proves the DVLA was aware of the situation and she shouldn’t have been embroiled in the case.
But a representative of the DVLA also sent her a letter in October 2020 which suggests the email she’d received from them may have given her false hope.
“Any statutory notice for an offence that took place after you sold the vehicle should be returned to the issuing authority giving what details you can about the sale of the vehicle,” the letter reads.
“Only the issuing authority is in a position to make a decision based on the evidence you provide.”
Ms Reinholde added: “I want to do this to help others.
“I know I am not the only person this has happened to.”
She added that she found the last year “really stressful and just horrendous”.
“I’ve constantly been afraid that another fine will come through the door every time I hear the letterbox go.
"I’ve got a fear that it could happen again. I’m a single, working mother and my life isn’t easy as it is without all this going on too.”
A DVLA spokeswoman said: “It is the registered keeper’s responsibility to notify the DVLA when they sell their vehicle.
"The quickest way to tell the DVLA if you’ve bought, sold or transferred a vehicle or to change an address is online.
"Our online services are easy to use and we urge all customers to use these where possible.”
