manaloplay She Turned in Her ‘Star Trek’ License Plates, but the Tickets Kept Coming

Beda Koorey, a retired legal secretary, returned her license plates stamped with “NCC 1701manaloplay,” like the identifying tag of the U.S.S. Enterprise in the “Star Trek” series, to the Department of Motor Vehicles in New York in April 2020.

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But in August of that year, a $50 ticket for speeding in the Bronx arrived in the mailbox at her Long Island home in Huntington, N.Y., even though she had stopped driving in June as her eyesight weakened.

Then another ticket arrived, and another.

Apparently, “Star Trek” fans were still out there, some doing their imitation of warp-drive speed on the roads, or just driving badly, and using replicas of the plates with the starship tag.

“There is even one of ‘me’ driving a motorcycle,” she said.

When she returned the personalized plates that she no longer wanted to pay for, and which had been purchased in 1998 by her former husband, a Trekkie, she was given a receipt that said “plates destroyed.” But for the next four years, Ms. Koorey, 75, was entangled in state bureaucracy and caught in the zeal of “Star Trek” fans who had ordered similar Enterprise-themed novelty tags from online retailers that were erroneously traced back to her. She said she received hundreds of violations without driving a car.

On Amazon, a New York-like plate stamped with “NCC 1701” sells for $14. Such plates are unofficial, meant for display only, for bicycles or to be fastened to toys, but when affixed on vehicles they can generate captures from road-safety cameras and trigger the type of violations that ended up plaguing Ms. Koorey.

Ms. Koorey has amassed a stack of tickets that assume she has been flouting the law in a cross-country spree captured on camera and on random vehicles with U.S.S. Enterprise plates in more than 20 states, including Washington, Ohio, Texas, Florida and, well, New York.

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