Criminals have an eye on your license plate decal

FORT MYERS, Fla.- Do criminals have an eye on your license plate? WINK News is learning, thieves are stealing decals to avoid having to renew their own registration.

WINK News sat down with a Fort Myers women who says she never thought she’d be targeted over a sticker.

Thieves are taking a new approach to saving money, this time, they are targeting your license plate. Judith Archdale tells WINK News she was washing her car when she noticed the yellow decal was missing off of her Toyota Corolla.

“Oops, it was gone! No yellow sticker,” said Archdale.

She tells WINK News she thought it simply fell off.

“I must not have cleaned well enough before I put the new one on, and it just wore off,” Archdale told WINK News.

She says she never thought crooks would want to steal that sticker, but, turns out, thieves put the stolen sticker on their own car, to make it look like their registration is current.

“Then, I thought of all these poor people, but she said people can’t afford them.”

The Lee County Sheriff’s office tells WINK News, reporting your plate or sticker stolen means you get a replacement for free.

“It is a shock but once you know it is common, you think, why not?”

WINK News reached out to all law enforcement agencies in Southwest Florida, most of them tell us, they don’t keep a separate tally of the number of stolen plates versus stole decals.

The Cape Coral Police Department is the only who does keep a record and says in the last 90 days, they have had 20 reports of stolen stickers.

Law enforcement suggests putting slashes on your decal, that way, if someone tries to pull it off of your plate, it will shred into pieces.