A $600 Car That Became a Trap

A $600 used Chevrolet Monte Carlo sat in a parking lot at Chicago O’Hare International Airport long enough to turn into a six figure problem. By the time the situation became public, the car had been cited a record 678 times and the balance attached to it was reported at more than $106,000. The person whose life was upended was not the person accused of abandoning the vehicle, but the woman whose name was on the registration: Jennifer Fitzgerald.

Fitzgerald’s account, repeated across multiple reports, was that the car’s paperwork did not reflect who actually used and controlled it. She said her then boyfriend, Brandon Preveau, bought the Monte Carlo in 2008 from her uncle for $600, then registered it with the state under her name without her knowledge.

When the relationship ended, she said she did not have control of the vehicle or the ability to simply take it back, but the city’s ticket notices kept arriving in her mailbox because the registration pointed to her.

According to reporting based on the lawsuit, the break became the turning point. In 2009, Preveau allegedly left the Monte Carlo in an O’Hare parking lot and walked away. The Texas Public Radio report states the car began collecting tickets on November 17, 2009, and adds that Preveau worked at O’Hare, which was important in the case because Fitzgerald said the vehicle was in an employee lot she could not access. DNAinfo similarly reported that she said she was unable to retrieve the car from the lot while it sat in the same spot for about two and a half years.

The longer the car remained, the more the citations multiplied. What started as a basic parking issue expanded into a drumbeat of violations that reflected a vehicle slowly decaying in place. Accounts describing the complaint list tickets for issues such as improperly tinted windows, no city sticker, expired plates or registration, broken lights, and cracked or missing windows, along with citations that treated the car as hazardous or dilapidated. Over time, the paper trail grew into one of the largest ticket totals anyone in the city could remember, and Fitzgerald rose to the top of Chicago’s scofflaw list in news coverage.

There is even disagreement in major coverage about when the city finally removed the car, which hints at how long the dispute dragged on. DNAinfo reported that the Monte Carlo was ultimately towed in April 2012. The Texas Public Radio story described it as being towed in October 2012. Either way, the essential point remained the same: the car sat for years while the ticket count climbed into the hundreds.

For Fitzgerald, the consequences were not abstract. DNAinfo reported that she was overwhelmed by the notices and that her driver’s license was revoked because of the unpaid tickets. With no realistic way to pay a six figure bill, she sought free legal help from attorney Robin Omahana, who filed suit against the City of Chicago and Preveau, and the reporting also mentions United Airlines in connection with the employee lot context.

The lawsuit argued that Preveau was the true owner and should be responsible for the debt, and it also argued that the city should have towed an abandoned vehicle far earlier rather than continuing to issue citations.

The case hit a major legal obstacle in April 2013. The ABA Journal reported that Cook County Judge Thomas Allen dismissed Fitzgerald’s case after finding she had not exhausted the remedies available through the city’s ticket process, meaning she had not fully pursued the administrative steps required before going to court. Other coverage of the dispute noted that the dismissal did not end the conflict, but it did increase pressure for a negotiated solution rather than a headline trial over the full ticket total.

The ending came a few months later through settlement, not through Fitzgerald paying the original bill. In August 2013, the city agreed to drop more than $100,000 of the fines and reduce the total to $4,470. DNAinfo reported that Preveau made a $1,600 down payment, and Fitzgerald would pay $78 per month for three years to clear the rest.