Thousands Of NYC Parking Tickets Ripped Up Because Of A Typo

NEW YORK, NY — Go ahead and toss that parking ticket. The city Department of Finance refunded or dismissed 500,000 tickets this month because of a typographical error that's cost the city $26 million, a department spokeswoman said Tuesday.

The affected drivers got tickets between April and September for displaying an expired parking meter receipt or no receipt at all, spokeswoman Sonia Alleyne said.

The parking code they violated had changed from 4-08h10 to 4-08h1, but the tickets didn't reflect the new code number, Alleyne said.

"To correct the error, we sent two sets of letters to drivers who had been ticketed – one with a refund check and the other, a dismissal of the ticket," Alleyne told Patch in an email. Those letters went out earlier this month, she said.

Some 400,000 drivers got refunds for the tickets worth a total of $18 million, a spokeswoman for Mayor Bill de Blasio said. Another roughly 100,000 who hadn't paid the fines had them dismissed, costing the city $8 million.

A Nov. 2 letter from the Department of Finance published by 1010 WINS, which first reported the mistake on Monday, says drivers will get either a credit toward other parking fines or a check for the amount of the now-dismissed fine.

Jeffrey Shear, a deputy commissioner in the Department of Finance, told 1010 WINS this is the third time this year that the city has paid out big ticket refunds.

(Lead image via Morguefile)