A Newcastle woman charged with driving in Mudgee using an unregistered car, while she was disqualified and then gave police a fake name, was convicted in her absence when failing to appear in Mudgee Local Court last Wednesday.
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Katrina Maree Coghlan, aged 41, of Hunter Street, Newcastle, was fined a total of $2000 and disqualified for a further 12 months.
At about 4.38pm on Saturday, November 22, 2014, Coghlan was driving towards Mudgee on the Castlereagh Highway when she passed a stationary police vehicle.
The number plate recognition system showed that the car's registration had expired on November 13, 2014, due to fine default.
Police followed and stopped the car in Bell Street.
When asked to hand over her licence Coghlan told police that she'd left it at home in Newcastle and when they asked her for any form of identification – such as a bank card – she said she couldn't because she'd also left her purse at home.
She gave them a name, date of birth and address but when police ran the details through their system it produced a picture of a woman that bore no resemblance to Coghlan.
They checked the vehicle details which revealed that it was reregistered to Coghlan who was disqualified until September 2017.
Upon being informed of this she eventually went to the boot of the car, got her purse out and handed over her photo identification.
Coghlan was charged with 'Drive motor vehicle during disqualification period', 'Use unregistered registerable Class A motor vehicle on road', and 'Driver or rider state false name or home address'.