A few years ago, a cybersecurity expert in California attempted to “hobby hack” a system. I’ll venture to say we don’t exactly love it, either: the local DMV. The techie, who goes by the name “Droogie,” registered for a California vanity plate. He half-jokingly thought using the word “NULL” would help hide his identity if he were ever issued a citation. Instead, the system assigned him $18,000 worth of traffic tickets.

Droogie erroneously assumed that the word “NULL” would protect him from the law. Theoretically, it would work like this: If he ever got a ticket, the authority would enter “Null” into the license plate field. The system would interpret this as an invalid plate number. In turn, the citation would be “lost” in the technological depths at the California DMV…thereby letting Droogie off the hook.

In reality, though, it turns out that the DMV already had a large and growing record of certain citations given to vehicles without an identifiable license plate. Without plate numbers, the processing company entered the word “NULL.”

In turn, then, when Droogie made “NULL” an official license plate, the California DMV matched all the old citations to him. The driver landed $12,000 in fines all at once.

At the Def Con hacking conference, Droogie reported that he successfully appealed to the DMV, which removed the $12K worth of tickets. However, it didn’t end there.

Droogie apparently refused to change his license plate even after the DMV encouraged him to. After claiming that he’d done nothing wrong, he continued to receive tickets from the confused system…totaling another $6,000 by the time he presented at Def Con. He said he wouldn’t pay any of them.