The Daily BS • Bo Snerdley Cuts Through It!
The Daily BS • Bo Snerdley Cuts Through It!

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8,200 Michigan residents open their new IDs and ask the same question: ‘Who is the man in the photo?’

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BS BULLETIN:

  • About 8,200 Michigan residents received enhanced driver’s licenses or state IDs containing a mystery man’s photograph.
  • The Michigan Department of State says a vendor printing error substituted a generic stock photo and fake birth date for information that should have appeared in the lower-right corner.
  • Corrected cards have been mailed automatically, but recipients weren’t exactly thrilled to discover a smiling stranger on their government-issued identification.

Imagine finally getting your new driver’s license in the mail, opening the envelope and discovering that apparently you’ve become somebody else.

That was the surprise waiting for roughly 8,200 Michigan residents.

A batch of enhanced driver’s licenses and state IDs printed Aug. 26 contained a rather conspicuous mistake: a smiling man’s face appeared in the lower-right corner where a secondary image of the actual cardholder was supposed to be.

Michigan resident Lanita Nelson couldn’t quite believe what she was seeing.

“I kept looking and I was like, ‘That’s a man in the bottom corner,’” Nelson told CBS Detroit.

Then she noticed the mystery gentleman was smiling.

“I’m like, ‘What’s going on?’”

Excellent question.

Nelson looked closer and discovered another surprise: the birth date beside the man’s photograph wasn’t hers either. She eventually did what any reasonable person does when the government mails them an identification card containing a completely different human being.

She Googled him.

“Who is this man on my enhanced license?” she recalled searching.

Turns out thousands of her fellow Michiganders could have asked Google the same question. Another recipient joked on Facebook that the mystery photograph looked like Kevin Hart, according to the New York Post.

The Michigan Department of State eventually supplied the answer. Nobody’s identity had actually been swapped. The mystery man was a generic stock image used as a sample for enhanced licenses. The accompanying birth date was generic as well and did not belong to another Michigan resident.

The department blamed the mishap on its card-production vendor, Idemia.

“The misprinted information is generic and is not the information of another resident,” state officials said.

That’s reassuring. It doesn’t necessarily make presenting the thing during a traffic stop sound particularly appealing. Nelson wondered exactly that.

“If I show this to the police, and I mess around and get pulled over, they are going to try to take me to jail,” she told CBS Detroit.

The state says affected residents don’t have to do anything. Corrected licenses and IDs have already been mailed automatically. While waiting, residents can obtain a temporary credential online or at a Secretary of State branch. Those whose previous licenses haven’t expired can continue using them.

Some recipients nevertheless complained that they weren’t warned promptly after the problem was discovered.

“They could have sent out a blast email or anything and said, ‘Hey, make sure that you look and check,’” Nelson said.

Instead, thousands of people apparently got to experience Michigan’s newest enhanced-license security feature: Find the guy who isn’t you.

MY QUICK TAKE

There are driver’s-license mistakes. Then there’s the DMV mailing you a license featuring a bonus human being.

Thankfully, Michigan says he’s just a stock-photo model and everyone’s real identity is safe.

Which leaves only one unanswered question. Somewhere out there is this poor stock-photo guy. Does he have any idea he’s now licensed to drive 8,200 cars in Michigan?

 

DBS WIRE SOURCES:

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