© Star Spangled 200 archives/Star Spangled 200 archives The Maryland license plate that contains a link to a Philippines gambling site.
Samuel Zehr was unloading the car after a Memorial Day cookout when he glanced down at the Maryland license plate affixed above the rear bumper and saw a link to www.starspangled200.org.
Curiosity gripped him, and he pulled out his phone and typed in the URL. Instead of the official Maryland page he expected to see, a website flashing advertisements for a Philippines-based online casino popped up.
“The gambling website was not at all what I was expecting,” said Zehr, 39, who works in IT and has lived in Greenbelt in suburban Washington for more than 10 years.
The license plates were meant to commemorate the bicentennial of the War of 1812, which inspired Francis Scott Key to write the national anthem. Zehr assumed he had mistyped the website address, tried again on his computer and got the same result.
“It’s been hilarious,” Zehr said of the discovery and response to a Reddit post he made drawing the public’s attention to the URL mishap.
It’s been less hilarious for state officials in Maryland. Maryland’s Motor Vehicle Administration said there are 798,000 War of 1812 plates in use, about 15 percent of the more than 5.2 million registered vehicles in the state.
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“The URL is not and was never owned or maintained by the MVA,” said agency spokeswoman Ashley Millner.
The agency said in a statement that officials are working with the agency’s information technology department “to identify options to resolve the current issue.”
Millner declined to say whether state officials are considering sending out new plates or how much such a move would cost. The agency also wouldn’t say whether officials are considering buying the URL so it could once again promote the state’s history.
Millner said “the URL was maintained by Star Spangled 200, Inc., a nonprofit formed under the War of 1812 Bicentennial Commission formed in 2007 through an Executive Order.”
Now, visitors to www.starspangled200.org are redirected to www.globeinternational.info. Registration information for the entity that controls that site is private. Online requests to contact the owners were not answered.
The globeinternational site touts the benefits of Philippines online gambling, including virtual cockfighting, and has multiple links to an online casino site. The MVA said it “does not endorse the views or content on the current website.”
The MVA released the Star Spangled-themed plates on June 14, 2010, according to an annual report that year from the Maryland War of 1812 Bicentennial Commission. The annual report from 2014 touted the valuable free publicity the commemoration activities had garnered since the plate was issued, calculating the value of the “earned media” as “$36,553,349 in advertising equivalency.”
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Maryland Transportation Secretary Paul J. Wiedefeld did not respond to questions about steps the state could take to remedy the situation. Phone numbers and email addresses for employees of Star Spangled 200, Inc., the nonprofit once connected with the site, have been disconnected. Phone calls and emails to public relations representatives that have worked with Star Spangled 200 were not returned.
Zehr said he thinks the state should try to replace or phase out the plates, adding that there’s probably no easy solution to remedy the problem.
“I do feel really bad for the state employees who have to deal with this,” he said.