WASHINGTON — The first problem Zack Smedley says he had with this car was earlier this year on the night of January 28th when he decided to get out of his comfort zone in Maryland for a night out in D.C.
"My therapist was like, 'Hey, Zach, we should do exposure therapy where you go out to DC for a night and see that nothing bad will happen,' he recalled with a smile. "And so I did that and I parked my car there and I got back to a pile of broken glass."
His car was stolen and his trouble was just starting.
"Little did I know that was the first chapter in a long saga I'd still be a part of ten months later," Smedley said.
Police eventually found his car, but before that someone used it to rack up thousands of dollars in red light and speeding tickets - in one case driving 100 miles per hour in a 35 mph zone.
"There was one where it was speeding in an elementary school zone," he said.
Using the police report for his stolen car Smedley successfully appealed all but two of the tickets with D.C.'s DMV.
"They just said, you know, 'sit tight.' And so I did. And then next thing I knew I was getting a letter from collections," Smedley said. He received a collection notice for nearly $700 in unpaid fines for tickets issued to his stolen car.
"I just really need to get in the room with a human who can obviously determine that this is a mistake and fix it," said Smedley. "I feel like I've done everything right and nothing wrong, and yet I'm on the hook for nearly $700 for infractions I didn't commit and wasn't told about."
WUSA9 was able to reach someone at the DMV about Smedley's case on Friday and they promised to get to the bottom of this for him.
In the meantime, Zack says a prosecutor did call him back to say she had to drop the charges against the juvenile accused to stealing his car because of a scheduling technicality.