Fined Into Homelessness — Help Me Fund My Federal Lawsuit
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This Isn't Just My Fight. It's About What Happens When the System Can Take Everything From You.
A car license plate frame. A DMV registration sticker.
Officers could read my license plate from a few feet away. Yet over two years, that piece of plastic and that sticker became the stated reason I was stopped four times.
What happened next continued causing injury from the years prior.
My name is Adam Mackintosh—and I am asking you to get involved now.
Not tomorrow. Not when a court rules. Now.
Join the cause: Let's Fight This Together
Because this isn't only about me.
It's about what happens when an ordinary traffic stop can become a chain reaction of tickets, late penalties, DMV holds, collection actions, impound fees, lost transportation, lost work—and ultimately, the loss of a home that leads to imprisonment.
You may know the feeling.
A ticket that costs far more than the original offense.
A penalty that keeps growing because you couldn't pay it.
A DMV hold that makes it harder to legally drive to the job you need to pay the debt.
A tow yard charging you every day your vehicle remains there.
A system where you can owe money because you couldn't pay—and then be prevented from working because you owe money.
That cycle can consume a person's entire life.
And it doesn't ask whether you're Republican, Democrat, independent, or none of the above.
It asks whether you have enough money to survive it.
This is where my story became a fight for something bigger.
As my federal complaint alleges, the traffic-enforcement system was used to target me specifically.
The citations triggered penalties. The penalties triggered DMV late fees and a registration hold. The hold led to collection letters from the California Franchise Tax Board threatening wage garnishment, bank levies and property seizures. An impound then accumulated daily storage fees over a weekend while the one DMV office capable of releasing my vehicle was closed.
And when I tried to challenge what was happening, a traffic court demanded hundreds of dollars before it would even hear my side.
Pay first. Be heard later. If ever.
For someone already struggling to survive, that isn't simply a financial burden.
It can become a trap and Scheme to harm someone.
I wasn't always living in my car.
From 2017 to 2019, I was building a healthcare-and-rideshare technology company with a long-term goal of using AI and information gathered through that work to help reduce healthcare costs for seniors, people with disabilities, and patients.
Through that work, I witnessed matters that were under federal investigation. I became a witness connected to the DOJ's inquiry into Uber during the high-profile Waymo v. Uber litigation.
After I was constructively terminated, I rebuilt the only way I could: from my car.
I worked serving seniors, hospital patients, and people with disabilities, earning roughly $50–$275 a day.
The car was my workplace.
Then the fines, fees, holds and alleged retaliation kept mounting.
Eventually, the car I worked from became the car I lived in.
My wife ultimately flew back to Australia out of fear surrounding the continuing fines, fees, citations and alleged retaliation.
You can watch her video here.
Today, that vehicle is my home, my office, and my livelihood.
And I am still fighting to keep it.
Then there were the injuries.
The stops themselves left me injured. I allege that officers twisted my arms with enough force to damage my shoulders, particularly my right shoulder.
Those allegations are already part of the court record.
A physician has since identified degenerative bone disease in my shoulders that makes them more frail.
I cannot work at the capacity I once could.
And that is why I am telling you something I never wanted to have to say:
I cannot fight this alone anymore.
On July 23, 2026, I took the fight to federal court.
From the driver's seat of the car that has become my home, I filed a federal lawsuit:
Mackintosh v. Newsom, et al.
Case No. 2:26-cv-08508
United States District Court, Central District of California
The complaint brings 15 claims, including allegations under corruption under RICO, the Excessive Fines Clause, and federal civil-rights law, against officials and entities I allege were involved in the system described in my filings.
I also formally asked the court to consider referring the alleged pattern to the U.S. Attorney and the DOJ Civil Rights Division, with the goal that any relief could extend beyond me to other Americans subjected to the alleged scheme.
But filing a lawsuit is only the beginning.
What happens next depends on whether people are willing to stand up, pay attention, tell their stories, and help demand accountability.
THIS IS WHERE YOU COME IN.
Don't just watch my story. Become part of it.
Go to:
There, you can:
Sign the petition
Share your own experience
Read the court filings
Follow live updates on the case
Share this story with someone who has experienced a similar system
Help spread awareness
Donate to help keep this case moving forward
Join the growing effort to demand accountability and change
You don't have to agree with every detail of my case to believe that people deserve a meaningful opportunity to be heard.
You don't have to know me.
You don't have to belong to a political party.
You only have to believe that a person's ability to survive should not depend on whether they can immediately pay government, I'm alleging is extortion under the Hobbs Act.
Because today, it's my car.
Tomorrow, it could be yours.
Help me turn one person's fight into something bigger.
I am not asking you to simply feel sorry for me.
I'm asking you to act.
Sign the petition.
Share the story.
Tell me what happened to you.
Read the filings.
Support the case if you can.
And if you know someone who has been caught in a cycle of fines, fees, vehicle impounds, license or registration holds, or other government debt they could not escape, send them here.
Every person who speaks up makes it harder for these experiences to remain invisible.
Every story helps show whether what happened to me is an isolated incident—or part of something that demands a much larger conversation.
Every share puts this issue in front of another person.
And every person who gets involved helps create the possibility that the next person doesn't have to lose their transportation, their livelihood, their home, and their ability to fight back simply because they couldn't afford to pay first.
I started this fight because I had no other choice.
I'm asking you to join it because together, we may have a choice about what changes next.
Don't just watch.
Get involved.
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