[MRM]

You probably have some outstanding parking ticket that you forgot about. $70 sounds about right for an old parking ticket plus penalties and fees. My guess is that the old ticket went into default and the final amount was charged against your car via a lien with the DMV. It gets paid off whenever your car comes into contact with the system - such as being towed or sold.

The only other thing I can think of is that the property owner (assuming you were inadvertently parked on private property) charges a fee for the illegal parking, and somehow immediately places a lien on your car as it is towed. But that doesn't seem very likely.

Of course they cannot charge you an additional $70 service fee on top of their regular charges for no reason. Their fees are set by local ordinance. But I can promise you that whatever fee they charge you is valid and will be supported by law and paperwork. These people make a living out of towing people. They know what they are doing better than anyone in the world. There is no way they'll risk their livelihood by charging an improper fee, but there's no way they would pass up any legal chance to extract every last cent from you they could.

I'm pretty sure there's some fine or fee you owed to the state that you didn't know about that is the DMV lien. That's the only thing that explains their "DMV lien" story. If it was something else they wouldn't have called it a DMV lien. Since the reffer to it as a DMV lien, that really suggests some state or local agency was involved.