A towing firm in New Haven Connecticut used the BootFinder car confiscation system to tow away a truck belonging to a competing firm. On October 3, Lombard Motors grabbed a flatbed tow truck belonging to Unlimited Auto Repair & Towing Service over a claimed $300 in back taxes. The BootFinder is an electronic scanner used to photograph and identify vehicles so that they can be confiscated. Now Unlimited is complaining that Lombard's towing fee of $325 is too high.

"To me, that's gouging," Unlimited owner Joe Esposito told the New Haven Register newspaper.

Esposito told the Register that it is a common courtesy for tow truck companies to warn each other before performing such a tow, a courtesy not extended to ordinary motorists attending church services or shopping at a local store who returned to find their car had been grabbed by a BootFinder truck over $25 in claimed unpaid parking tickets. Esposito, for that reason, refuses to partipate in the city program.

"I don't like anybody doing that to me, so I don't do it," Esposito told the Register.

A subsidiary of another towing company that does tow cars with BootFinder owes $28,230 in back taxes. This company was allowed to go on a payment plan not available to ordinary motorists.