A HOMELESS man’s Mercedes was impounded after he was fined £2,500 by jobsworths, despite doing nothing wrong.
Sebastian Rosca, 38, was thrown into a nightmare situation after his motor was seized for unpaid fines.
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Rosca had refused to pay the ULEZ fines as his motor was compliant with the clean air regs.
But bailiffs still chased the Londoner and impounded the car a fortnight ago, leaving Rosca without the motor he sometimes sleeps in.
The car is a 2015 Mercedes-Benz C-Class Saloon C300 BlueTEC Hybrid and is ULEZ compliant, according to TfL’s vehicle confirmation website.
Rosca says he has severe mental health issues so is unable to work and is waiting on a council home.
But last Sunday he was left running around the street trying to find his pride and joy after he realised it had gone.
He told The Sun: “Now I don’t have a car, it’s crazy.”
Letters seen by The Sun show bailiffs CDER Group demanding £2,478 for seven ULEZ breaches.
One dated for the 15th of April said that enforcement action would begin on Thursday April 18, but the motor was taken on April 14.
Rosca said he had gone to a friends’ place to wash clothes and take a shower and when he returned his motor had disappeared.
He said he then spent the next couple of hours believing he had forgotten where he had parked the car and walked around the streets in a panicked state looking for it.
“I was going like crazy, up and down the road because I didn’t know for like one hour… because I thought maybe I forgot where I parked the car.
“I spent one hour going around, around, around because I couldn’t find my car.”
Then he heard from TfL the car had been impounded by bailiffs and he had two weeks to pay or else CDER Group were going to sieze the car forever.
“Unbelievable, I said to the bailiffs: “check the number plate it is ULEZ compliant.”
But the company still took it.
Trying to get his car back Rosca called around to the bailiffs, TfL and a court – none of who could agree whose job it was to sort the problem, he said.
“It was very bad, it was like somebody had hit me in the head, I was very hopeless.”
That’s why I got this car, the hybrid, to not pay taxes, not pay ULEZ
He said the impounding of his car had put him into a depressive episode and he hadn’t got out of bed for five days.
“It was very bad… it locked by brain in a place… it’s very very depressing, I don’t know how they can do something like this.
“It’s not my problem to pay for something like this… it’s unbelievable, unbelievable.
“That’s why I got this car, the hybrid, to not pay taxes, not pay ULEZ.”
He said that charges only started when ULEZ expanded in August last year.
He said TfL put him through “ping-pong” for two or three months despite him sending the organisation evidence.
“They [TfL] said to me: ‘oh it’s a mistake with the new system when we expanded’.
“They realised my car was ULEZ compliant and they said ‘just ignore the penalties’, which I did, but they kept coming.”
He said TfL told him a number of times that the fines would be all cancelled from their end.
Have you been chased by bailiffs over wrongly issued ULEZ fines? Email James Halpin on james.halpin@news.co.uk
“Then I realised I was only getting them when I went down a certain street, so there must have been something wrong with the camera.”
They once told him to pay the money and then try and get a refund, but the homeless unemployed Londoner doesn’t have the cash.
Another time a TfL customer service representative told him to not worry about the charges and they would be cancelled.
But the bailiffs kept chasing Rosca and his car was impounded a fortnight ago.
Following enquiries by The Sun, TfL has now wiped the fines and ordered the release of Rosca’s car.
A TfL spokesperson said: “We are sorry that Mr Rosca was incorrectly charged for journeys within the ULEZ when he swapped a private number plate from another vehicle.
“We apologise for any distress the handling of his case has caused him and have cancelled all the outstanding fines.”
CDER Group has been approached for comment.
What are the ULEZ rules?
Drivers will be whacked with a daily charge if their vehicle doesn’t meet green standards.
Older vehicles, including motorbikes, that don’t meet the tighter emissions standards have to pay £12.50 every day they are used within the ULEZ.
The charge runs from midnight to midnight which means you will be charged for two days if your journey started before midnight and travels into the next day.
As a rule of thumb, the vehicles affected include pre-2015 diesels and pre-2006 petrol cars.
You can easily check if yours falls foul on the ULEZ website.
A £110million scrappage scheme has been set up to help small businesses, charities and households in receipt of child benefit or universal credit get rid of non-compliant vehicles.
But motorists have complained that the £2,000 on offer doesn’t come anywhere close to the cost of replacing their cars.
According to TfL: ”Any money received from the scheme is reinvested into running and improving London’s transport network, such as expanding bus routes in outer London.”
According to Transport for London: ”The aim of the ULEZ is to improve air quality by reducing the number of vehicles in London that don’t meet emissions standards.
”This has helped to reduce harmful nitrogen dioxide pollution by nearly half in central London.”
Unlike the Congestion Charge, the ULEZ operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 364 days a year – excluding Christmas Day on December 25.
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