A Nevada grandmother was busted in a full-scale, taxpayer-funded sting operation and is now facing tens of thousands in criminal fines for…lemme see if I’ve got this right, here…yep, offering to give a ride to someone.
Literally. That’s it. That’s the charge.
According to this, 61-year-old Susie Holland decided she’d made a little extra cash this year by giving rides to people headed to the Burning Man festival, an annual week-long music festival in the Nevada desert that brings in more than 60,000 people every year. Despite having never been to Burning Man herself, she said she was inspired by her experience picking up a couple of her friends from the concert last year after they got stranded thanks to heavy rains, saying their stories were entertaining. This year, she figured she’d repeat the drive and maybe make a little extra Christmas money along the way.
So, being the hardened criminal she clearly is, Holland advertised the service on Craigslist for $65, and was quickly contacted by some “Burners” looking for a ride. The strangers also offered her an additional $500 if she agreed to pick them back up from the festival later that night.
But when she arrived at the Grand Sierra Resort bright and early at 6:30 a.m. on Monday as agreed upon, she said she was immediately swarmed by a team of law enforcement agents in SUVs like she’d just been busted hustling a suitcase of cocaine bricks in her trunk.
“When I pulled in, they just swooped up on me in three undercover Ford Explorers,” Holland told the Reno Gazette Journal. “They were coming at me so fast, so hard and so intensely, I was like, what is happening right now?”
It turns out those agents were from the Nevada Transportation Authority, who told her she’d broken the law by offering rides without a license.
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No, not a driver’s license - a special license the government says you’ve got to have before you can take money from willing people to transport them places, of your own free volition.
“The NTA’s mission is to protect the traveling public which requires that the agency regulate certificated and permitted providers as well as take proactive measures to identify and deter unlicensed activity,” NTA spokesperson Teri Williams told the Reno Gazette in a statement. “Ultimately, people that engage in commerce of any kind must be knowledgeable about what is required to operate legally…the onus falls on the individual to be informed and in compliance.”
Holland said she had absolutely no idea offering rides to someone for money was against the law.
The cops told her she was facing three charges, all of which carry up to $10,000 per violation. On top of $30,000 in fines, she also had to fork out $1,000 for the NTA to release her car - which they’d impounded - and another $500 to the impound lot.
While she waits on her bill, which the cops told her would arrive in a couple months, Holland has launched a GoFundMe to help cover the costs, asking for $5,000. She said when she went to pick up her car, the impound lot told her they had at least 18 other vehicles that had been confiscated by the NTA for the same reason.
“Clearly I’m just a grandma giving rides to the Burn,” Holland told the Gazette. “But they know what they’re doing. We just weren’t [aware]. No one was aware of it.”
Land of the free, ladies and gentlemen.
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