I was in Italy (Florence) 11 months ago and had a rental car. I recieved notice of a speeding ticket (over 10 kph, but under 40 kph) in the mail a week ago. The fee is $375 euro (actually 388 euro when I go to the payment page). The information in the notice instructs me to go to info.myfines.it which a little googling tells me that this is the legitimate site for ticket collections (but boy does it look janky). Before I consider paying:
It looks like the fine would have been only 150 euro if paid within 5 days, 201 euro if paid within 60, and 375 euro thereafter. Even though the ticket seems to be from nearly a year ago, I just got the notice. Is this legal?
There was no photo evidence despite the ticket stating "camera". I did request photographic evidence via info.myfines.it but not sure how long that will take. Do they have a legal requirement to provide evidence?
I heard there is a 5 year statue of limitations on this. If I am not planning to go back to Italy within the next 5 (now 4) years, is there really anything that can happen here?
I go to Europe a few times a year and have gotten 1 or 2 speeding tickets over the course of decades and have paid them promptly. But I've never gotten one almost a year out and with such a high fee. Would this realistically cause a problem if I ever wanted to rent a car in some other European country?
Thank you for any input you may have.
Thanks.
EDIT: I wanted to thank everybody for their feedback. I think I'm going to go ahead and just pay it at the current 375 euro rate. And to answer some of the questions/critisisms:
I never had the intention to not pay a valid speeding ticket. I questioned the validity of this as the ticket is coming from a third party, not a government agency, and their website looks so janky that appears to have been made in 1997. I went through their portal but was honestly afraid to put my credit card number into the webpage (which is why I made this post). Also, the fact that the ticket arrived almost a year after the fact seemed suspect.
What also made me think that this may have been a scam is that the amount requested was automatically the one that you would get if you ignored the bill for over 60 days. I would have been happy to pay it in the first 5 days of being notified at 150 euro. Instead they start with requesting an amount that already has the late fees on it. That didn't seem fair.
I don't speed by volition. I've been driving in the US for 30 years without a single speeding ticket. The signage on roads in Europe (especially in cities) is frankly rather poor in many areas. And even though this is my 2nd or 3rd speeding ticket in Europe over the past 2 decades of driving rental cars there, they have only been slightly over the limit (and this ticket is also for the minimal amount over the speed limit as they have higher penalties for higher excessive speeds). And again, not because I was trying drive over the limit, but because the signage was not clear.