Alabama man fined $19k for 'XXXXXXX' vanity plate!

Washington, Oct 20 (ANI): Scottie Roberson of Huntsville has been slapped with 19000 dollars worth of fines, courtesy his vanity plate which has seven X's - XXXXXXX.

Birmingham parking patrols strike seven X's in place of the plate number, whenever any car is found parked illegally without license plates or at meters that are no longer valid.

However, Roberson said his plate was a souvenir of the days when he built custom cars and was called "Racer X."

And he uses seven X's, as seven is his favourite number.

Roberson revealed that almost a year back he started getting letters over outstanding parking tickets, at times even 10 in a day in 10 places.

Last November, he called up city officials, but the notices kept pouring.

"Whenever I call, nobody seems to want to help me...One woman said not to worry about it because they didn't have the manpower to come arrest me," al.com quoted him, as saying.

The officials later told him that the tickets had been issued by mistake as his vanity plate read XXXXXXX.

City spokeswoman April Odom confessed last week that Roberson had been wrongly fined and that he would not have to pay anything.

Birmingham Traffic Engineer Gregory Dawkins said: "Maybe we need to go with nine X's, or maybe we just need to leave that part blank altogether." (ANI)