That is mortifying. I hope he was able to rebuild his life afterwards, and that the stigma didn't follow him around everywhere.

I once got accused of a hit-and-run because they presumably entered the wrong licence plate? I eventually got off when I was able to prove I was in another city at the time, but I was totally freaking out!

The creepy part was there was another car of the same make, model, and colour that often parked near us at the apartment complex and its plate only differed from ours by 1 letter. It was bad enough that my wife eventually attached a little foam ball to the head of the radio antenna so we could tell our car apart.

I've thought about that since, and concluded it's not as statistically improbable as you might think? Licence plates are issued in blocks that just go up sequentially, so finding someone living nearby with an almost-identical number is probably pretty common. And if you both bought the car new, there's a decent chance it will be the same model.