Ed Quiroga drank too much beer celebrating his intramural football team's championship four years ago, got into his car and left the bar.

West Melbourne police popped him with a DUI. He got a 180-day suspension for the first-time offense, a year of probation and performed 50 hours of community service with a Palm Bay road crew. He also paid $1,430 in fines, counseling and driving school.

Two months ago, though, he got a letter saying his license had been suspended -- again. The state had no record of his previous suspension and compliance with court orders because of a clerical oversight by the Brevard County Clerk of Courts.

"I'd been driving three days on a suspended license," he said. "If I got pulled over, I could have gone to jail. It didn't make me real happy."

The Palm Bay resident is among nearly 500 people out of nearly 6,200 who got DUI convictions in Brevard County since 2002 and who received letters saying their licenses were re-suspended. They were given 20 days to show they already had served their suspension and met other conditions set by the courts, said Julie Baker, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles.

"If they already took the course that's needed with a first time DUI and served their mandatory suspension, they will in effect already have served that time," Baker said.

The Brevard County Clerk of Courts didn't send the citations for those convictions to the DHSMV. Because of that oversight, no record of conviction, suspension or meeting the court's conditions existed for those drivers.

"When we sent the suspension record up, they threw it out because there was no citation," Clerk of Courts Scott Ellis said.

He learned of the error after a local DHSMV officer notified his office in January. That was after a man tried to get his temporary license that would allow him to drive to work, Ellis said.

The Clerk of Courts searched its records and obtained all the citations that hadn't been reported to the state, said Aetna Brannen, compliance and collections supervisor for the Clerk of Courts. Until then, Brannen said in an e-mail to FLORIDA TODAY, she thought the citations were being recorded automatically to Tallahassee.

Brannen retransmitted the incomplete records Feb. 3, 2006.

Once the state got the dispositions and updated those records, the court-ordered revocation or suspension was placed on the drivers' records for the first time, even though the drivers already had met the conditions of the court.

When he got his letter, Quiroga said, he called the DHSMV, which explained what happened. He called State Sen. Mike Haridopolos' office, which helped straighten out his problem. He had to pay an extra $60, though, to get his license reinstated again.

Quiroga knew he screwed up, but paid his dues.

"I did something stupid, and I paid for it with a year of my life," Quiroga said.

"Then it came back to haunt me four years later."

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