One upstate New York woman has discovered that crudely forging a document may actually be worse than not having the correct document at all after being arrested on Class “D” felony charges for driving with a hand-drawn safety inspection sticker.
State police say that they stopped a vehicle on July 6 after they observed it committing vehicle and traffic violations in Union, New York, which is just north of the Pennsylvania border. The trooper who made the stop said that the driver of the vehicle did not have a valid driver’s license, and things only got worse from there.
The owner was in the passenger seat of the vehicle at the time of the traffic stop. It didn’t take much investigating before police saw that the inspection sticker on the windshield was fake.
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State police published this photo of the sticker, and it’s clear to see why they became suspicious of it. Not only does it have the distinct appearance of having been drawn with a crayon on construction paper, like a kindergartner’s homework, the lines aren’t all straight and a number of details are missing. Not the work of masters in forgery, then.
In addition to the forged document, police also allege that the car’s owner was in possession of “suspected methamphetamine.” As a result, she was arrested, and is being charged with class “D” felony Possession of a Forged Instrument and misdemeanor Criminal Possession of a Controlled Substance in the seventh degree.
While the charges for possessing a controlled substance are their own problem, the woman would have been much better off not attempting to forge her inspection sticker. The penalty for not having the sticker is a fine of up to $100 (plus an $88 fee), while class “D” felonies can result in as many as seven years in jail in New York, though prison time is not mandatory, according to Jones Hacker Murphy Law firm.
The woman has been issued appearance tickets to Broome County Centralized Arraignment and Processing.
