FORT WORTH — The Texas Department of Public Safety has mistakenly mailed hundreds of driver's licenses to the wrong people.
Statewide, an estimated 500 to 600 people who applied for a license renewal or replacement in late March or early April instead received somebody else's card, DPS spokeswoman Tela Mange said Tuesday.
DPS blamed the mix-up on a malfunctioning machine that was recently installed to sort licenses for mailing. The malfunction continued for about a day before it was discovered and fixed, Mange said.
"We're very concerned about it, and we're working to make sure this never happens again," Mange said.
Tyler Johnson of Keller, a 23-year-old student at Texas State University in San Marcos, recently applied for a new license. When he opened his DPS envelope last weekend, a cover letter was addressed to him, but the attached license belonged to a 47-year-old El Paso man.
"At first, we got this huge laugh out of it, but then we were concerned where his license went to," said Tyler's father, Lee Johnson of Keller. "With identity theft, you never know what somebody can do with that information."
A driver's license contains enough personal information for thieves to open up a line of credit or a bank account in that name, make long-distance phone calls or apply for a Social Security card, according to the Texas attorney general's office.
Tom Kelley, a spokesman for the state attorney general's office, said that it's against the law to possess someone else's driver's license, so anyone who received one by mistake should report it immediately.
