Fake license plates?

Hey there,

So I’ve been living away from Houston for the past year but ever since I returned, in the span of two weeks I’ve seen two different cars (driving like maniacs—so I guess just normal Houston drivers) with very obviously fake license plates.

Not fake paper plates; these are meant to look like the plain black Texas plates with white text, but the size, font, and positioning of the words is all off.

I’ve confirmed both of them were fake by looking up the license plate numbers on the many websites that let you do that to find vehicle info, and they always return an error about not existing.

Anybody know about this? Are these stolen vehicles? The one today was a very clean Tesla Model X, not some junky old car. I remember the fake paper plates but this is new to me.

Thanks!