Barbara Lipsky has lived in Rochester, New York, for most of her life. She and her late husband moved to the region in the 1960s after he got a job with Monroe County. The state granted him special license plates to distinguish him as a government worker. The plate reads 1 M-20.

He passed away five years ago, but she was able to keep his old plate on her Kia Seltos SUV. Therefore, the plate has been in the family for over 60 years. For that long, neither had an issue. Until January of 2025, when Barbara started noticing $25 toll charges on her credit card.

The problem is, she rarely drives into the city. She rarely drives at all.

Confused, she called E-ZPass, the toll company. That’s when she learned the strange reason for the charges.

“[The E-ZPass representative is] pulling it up and she’s looking and all of a sudden she starts laughing,” Barbara tells WHEC. “And I ask, ‘What’s so funny?’ She says, ‘Well, I just saw the picture. It’s a state police car with your license plate.”

The proof was in the pictures

Sure enough, the cruiser’s license plate was identical to the one that belonged to Barbara’s husband: 1 M-20. Every time the police car drove into Manhattan, the system applied the congestion charge to Barbara’s account. E-ZPass charged her 16 times in one month, adding up to $144.

“Not only have they got my money, but I’m supposed to take a trip to Michigan this summer. What am I going to do?” she asked. “It’s spooky, upsetting, and inconvenient. It’s all those things. And it’s starting to really cost me money. They’ve got about $150 of mine they shouldn’t have.”

Reporters contacted the Department of Transportation to see if they could help Barbara. After four days, Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) called with good news: Barbara wasn’t responsible for the charges.

The state is letting her keep the plate, too

DMV spokesperson Walt McClure told reporters that officials had mistakenly assigned the police cruiser a plate number that already existed.

“When State Police need a new fleet vehicle plate assigned, they contact DMV to ensure the plate configuration they’ve chosen is not already registered to someone else,” he wrote in an email. “We are now working with NYSP to replace the duplicative plate number.”

The New York State Police had a different issue with the charges: it means police cruisers are being charged for traveling into Manhattan when they shouldn’t have been. State law says government vehicles are exempt from congestion pricing charges.

Beau Duffy, a spokesperson with the NYSP, said the agency has been wrongfully charged around $13,000.

“We are working with the MTA to get the charges on our account reversed,” he said.