$106,000 parking fines, The single mom settled to pay just $4,500 of the money owed after her ex-boyfriend gives her about $1,600 for a down payment.
A Chicago woman who racked up nearly $106,000 in parking fines settled with the city to pay a fraction of the fees owed — and her boyfriend, who allegedly ditched her car in an inaccessible lot, was ordered to foot part of the bill.
Jennifer Fitzgerald became the city’s biggest parking ticket scofflaw when a car registered under her name was ticketed a whopping 678 times over three years after it was dumped at an O’Hare International Airport parking lot in Nov. 2009.
The mother of one has refused to pay the fines and claimed her ex-boyfriend, Brandon Preveau, took the spare keys and abandoned the 1999 Chevrolet Monte Carlo in an employee lot that she could not access, the Chicago Tribune reported.
After a months-long fight, Fitzgerald agreed to pay the city just $4,500 of the parking fines in monthly installments after Preveau gives her $1,600 for the down payment.
Fitzgerald has long maintained that the car — which she says Preveau bought from her uncle for $600 — should have been towed long before the city removed it from the lot in Oct. 2012.
The car had been ticketed repeatedly for multiple offenses including improperly tinted windows, not having the proper city sticker and expired plates or registration, the paper reported.
Roderick Drew, a city law department spokesman, said that the city made several efforts to settle the debt as the fines increased — but Fitzgerald failed to show up in court.
“Parties came together and worked out a reasonable resolution to this situation,” Drew told the Tribune.
“By following the terms of the settlement, at the end of this three-year period Ms. Fitzgerald will be able to resolve the debts, receive her driver’s license — which she could not have with all of these tickets hanging over her head — and she can move on with her life.”
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