This is a hero for our times.

Nick Stafford paid the tax on two cars to the DMV in Lebanon, Va., in nothing but pennies. A total of 300,000 pennies, to be precise.

Stafford didn't happen to have a lot of pennies lying around under the couch cushions. As you may have guessed, he was trying to make a point.

Stafford, who hauled five wheelbarrows worth of pennies into the DMV, was angry because he encountered a slew of red tape while trying to get the direct phone numbers to various DMVs in the state after he filed a request through the Freedom of Information Act. Red tape? The DMV? Hard to believe, right? The matter got so messy that he wound up filing three lawsuits.

“If they were going to inconvenience me then I was going to inconvenience them,” Stafford bluntly said.

He was so intent on making his point that he actually hired 11 people to open all the penny rolls he had. That ran him $440. He also spent another $400 on wheelbarrows, as well as $165 on the lawsuits, bringing the total to a hair over $1,000. All because he had trouble getting a phone number. And none of that takes into account the three grand he had to cough up for the DMV for his cars, which started the whole matter in the first place.

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