Wheels were clamped and outstanding debts were paid at Werribee’s Eagle Stadium carpark last week in a Sheriff’s Office blitz that nabbed 76 fine evaders owing more than $450,000 in unpaid fines.
The Sheriff’s Office teamed up with Victoria Police on Wednesday in the day-long operation, using automatic number plate recognition technology to identify drivers with outstanding warrants and unregistered vehicles.
The road-block operation along Ballan Road detected 76 fine evaders with a combined 991 outstanding warrants and unpaid fines valued at over $458,000.
The Sheriff’s Office recouped more than $37,000 of the outstanding debts from 40 drivers.
A further 20 drivers with 388 warrants worth nearly $250,000 were given seven days to arrange payment or risk having their driving licence or car registrations suspended.
The operation was carried out the same week Sheriff’s Office statistics revealed that Wyndham had the fourth-highest value of outstanding warrants in Melbourne.
In total, 26,595 Wyndham residents had a combined 205,568 outstanding warrants totalling more than $80.4 million for the 2015-16 financial year.
Casey topped the list of fine evaders, with more than 31,000 people owing $137.1 million in outstanding fines. Hume ($107.3 million) and Frankston ($85 million) rounded out the top three.
Sheriff of Victoria Brendan Facey said last week’s operation was indicative of the department’s plan to clamp down on this kind of behaviour.
“We are seeing too many people finding themselves in financial trouble because they simply ignore speeding or parking fines,” Mr Facey said.
“Fines can quickly escalate after infringements are issued.
“For example, you may be issued with a red-light infringement in January with a penalty of $389. By June, if you ignored your fine, the total penalty could be $576.60.”
Mr Facey said a centre set up six months ago that contacts people who have passed the first due date on their infringement notices as a reminder had already recovered $16.2 million in unpaid fines, and arranged payment plans for 18,571 matters valued at more than $3.6 million.
“In many cases, people had simply forgotten they had an outstanding fine, or just needed a little bit of help understanding the next step in the process to finalise their matter,” he said.
