Brett Sanders was livid when he was pulled over in October and fined $212 for driving nine miles per hour over the speed limit in his Frisco, Texas, neighborhood, he told BuzzFeed News.
"I didn't hurt anybody," he said. "I didn't endanger anybody. My speed was safe for the conditions around me. I didn't feel like I owed anybody anything."
He fought the ticket in court, but he eventually lost in a jury trial.
But Sanders refused to pay the ticket quietly. In a YouTube video, titled "How to pay a speeding ticket. #ResistTheft," Sanders documented his paying for the $212 ticket with 21,200 pennies.
View this video on YouTube
The speeding fine was $79.90, but the court fees amounted to $132.10 for a total ticket of $212, Frisco Municipal Court spokesperson Catherine Ross told BuzzFeed News.
"I decided I wanted to make a point that this is not right," Sanders said. "This is not fair."
Sanders got hundreds of penny rolls from two Chase bank branches and hammered them open on a table.
Then he shoveled it all into two huge buckets spray-painted with the phrases "extortion money" and "policing for profit."
When he reached the Frisco Municipal Court traffic ticket counter, he dumped the pennies all over the counter and floor.
"Just mail me the receipt," he yelled over his shoulder as he left.
The video has gained more than 987,000 views with comments from people who don't blame Sanders for his protest against the traffic ticket.
But other people thought Sanders' protest simply put an undue burden on court staff rather than the police officer who issued the ticket.
Other people described the whole situation in pretty plain terms.
Ross said court staff gathered all the pennies and took them to various Coinstar locations around the city.
It took about three hours to count all the pennies, she said.
Turns out, Sanders overpaid the ticket by $7.81. But he hasn't yet gone by the court to retrieve the difference.
Ross said Sanders didn't technically break any rules because the court "accepts legal tender (in this case, change)."
The court staff can recall only one previous instance where someone paid a ticket in pennies.
"It felt good just from an emotional standpoint to just kind of stick it to them one last time," said Sanders. "But at the end of the day, I left without $212. At least I proved my point and was able to share that with a lot of other people and spark a debate."