$106,000 in Unpaid Parking Tickets Settled for $4,500

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Chicago resident Jennifer Fitzgerald got a great deal on airport parking — about $4 per day. But that is for three years of parking, coming to a total of about $4,500.

Why would you park a car at the airport for that long? Well, she didn’t: Her ex-boyfriend Brandon Preveau did, but the car was registered to her, the Chicago Tribune says.

Preveau, an airport employee, bought the car from Fitzgerald’s uncle and left it in her name, but abandoned it in an airport employee parking lot, the Tribune says. It began collecting tickets in November 2009 — for everything from improperly tinted windows, to not having the proper city sticker, to expired plates or registration, to cracked or missing windows and broken lamps. There were 678 tickets in total, coming to a total of nearly $106,000.

Employees kept ticketing it for three years; it wasn’t towed until October 2012.

In the end, the city settled with Fitzgerald for a fraction of the ticketed amount, about $4,500, NPR says. That includes a $1,600 down payment that Preveau will reimburse Fitzgerald for, and then payments of $78 per month for the next three years.

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