A Victorian pensioner has been fined more than $20,000 after claiming a group of people wrongly nominated him for their driving ban.
Kelvin Bellette lost his wallet on a bus on the Mornington Peninsula in 2021 and, after reporting it to police, got it back minus his driver’s license.
Since then, the disabled retiree and part-time pizza delivery driver has received 60 fines from the region, only four of which are his, he says.
Mr Bellette moved to Colac, a three-hour drive west of the Mornington Peninsula, in early 2023 and was fined for an offense in that area later that year.
He hired Colac attorney Tony Pyrtz, who sought a photo related to the offense that showed a person, clearly not Mr. Bellette, behind the wheel.
“It appears his name has been shopped around the Mornington Peninsula district to nominate him as a driver,” Mr Pyrtz told police. ABC.
Kelvin Bellette lost his license on a Mornington Peninsula bus and claims he was ‘shopped around’ so people could put him forward for driving fines
The driving offenses include speeding, driving without a seat belt and driving unregistered vehicles in a toll zone.
“He’s in a spiral of fines that aren’t his,” Pyrtz said.
Fines Victoria has since provided Mr Bellette’s lawyer with a list of the people who nominated him as a driver for infringement notices.
The list includes seven different people, driving different vehicles, who nominated him as a driver, with one person doing so for three different offences.
A Mornington Peninsula trading company also nominated him for eight different offences.
“Kelvin has never owned or been in any of these vehicles, and he does not know any of the people who identified him as the responsible driver,” Mr Pyrtz said.
A very confused Mr. Bellette entered into a payment plan to pay off the enormous debts, and only discovered with the help of Mr. Pyrtz what seemed to have happened.
Under Victorian law, knowingly providing false or misleading information in a nomination statement is an offense.
Penalties of $9,000 and potential loss of license apply to an individual in any case, while a company could face a fine of $18,000 in any case.