A man who enjoyed an extended vacation in Costa Rica returned home to find the government thought he had died.
Nick Fatouros had gone abroad, but when the 34-year-old returned he had never imagined he would be told he was dead in a letter from the Quebec government.
The Montreal native received a 14-page letter from the Ministry of Justice hoping to collect money from his estate for a 2022 speeding ticket.
He told CTV News: “I was laughing. I said, ‘Wow, that’s news to me.'”
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Nick says he contested a speeding ticket and then left for an extended vacation and “completely forgot about it”, but when he got back, he was given the shock of a lifetime.
He’s thankful his mom never saw the letter though.
Nick added: “If she would open this and I was off on my travels, God forbid, you know, she would say, what’s going on?”
He said he tried to contact the government to prove he was alive but hasn’t been able to get through to anyone.
But he’s been warned he needs to get it resolved as it could affect more than just a speeding ticket, legally.
“My next step is just to figure this out and tell them, look, maybe it was a mistake, a typo? Who knows?” Nick said.
The ministry said in a statement that it was ‘human error’.
“The Collector of Fines mistakenly used a letter template used to correspond with an estate rather than the one normally used to communicate with a defendant. We apologize for the situation,” it stated.
“An appropriate follow-up will be made with the citizen.”
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